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thosch3i · 3 years

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Hi hi! So the lost tombs and chronology all super confuse me. So tlt2 ended on a cliffhanger that was not resolved by tlt3 which is ultimate note, but now there is another tlt3 that I am guessing is made by the same studio as tlt2 (but not UN) that actually follows tlt2? And it has the same WPZ as tlt2 (but sadly different WX, ZQL though I’m sure these guys are great). You seem to know what you’re talking about so I’m hoping you can help!

UN also ended on a cliff hanger so I’m wondering if they’ll get a sequel from their studio that comes before tomb of the sea.

ahhh hello anon! yes ahaha the dmbj dramas are certainly very confusing--because they keep switching the screenwriters/entire production team between dramas. huanrui did tlt1 (2015), tlt2 (2019), and the sequel to tlt2 (2021). they're also technically the production company for un (2020), but linghe did like all the directing/casting/writing so its significantly different in tone and quality from the other dramas huanrui produced. npss (dmbj author) did sha hai (2018) and tltr (2020), with sha hai being in collab with linghe, so you can see lots of parallels with un and shared cast. (gonna add that i dont know much about the m9 because that’s not what im personally interested in, so i’m only going by stories with wu xie & the iron triangle.)

unfortunately, the dramas pretty have no continuity as a result of all the weird shit and multiple studios doing different dramas and messy stuff going on behind the scenes. the author's production company currently has all the rights back for filming future dramas, which is......imo, a good thing for book fans who love the author but a 😬 thing for book fans who like the original story more than what the author is now doing with it. I'll uh avoid saying too much opinion stuff though so no more on that 😅

that aside! yes 云顶天宫 “explore with the note” part 2......is the direct sequel to tlt2 and done by the same studio. unfortunately the writers are different and im not sure how much of the production team is the same either. idk how much you know about the novels so brief summary here--for the chinese version, the main story has 9 parts split among 8 books (though the official eng tls have each part being a different book) with some important content being as follows:

official eng title “cavern of blood zombies” (first time wx goes into a tomb, first t3j meeting)

official eng title “angry sea, hidden sands” (xisha seabed tomb, introduce a-ning)

official eng title “bronze tree of death” (bronze tree in qinling, wx & lao yang solo adventure)

official eng title “palace of doom” (heavenly palace on the clouds, introduce bronze gate)

official eng title “deadly desert winds” (golmud, introduce hei xiazi, desert, rainforest, tamutuo)

official eng title “graveyard of a queen” (the rest of that arc, wu sanxing & xie lianhuan reveal, jade meteorite, amnesiac xiaoge and escape, sanshu vanishes for good--also i think the official eng tl covers a couple chapters of the beginning of the next part too)

阴山古楼 (searching for xiaoge’s memories in banai, miluotuo cave, i think introduction of wu erbai)

邛笼石影 (auction/hotel iron triangle fight, introduce xiao hua & xiuxiu, wx & xh on the mountains alone while pz & xg go with granny huo)

finale (rescue from zhang family mansion, changbai mountain goodbye, 10 years promise)

after the main story are the main sequels:

zang hai hua (tibetan sea flower; unfinished & abandoned) covers wu xie a few years after xiaoge has entered the gate, searching to understand xiaoge’s past

sha hai (tomb of the sea; unfinished & abandoned) covers wu xie’s plan to wipe out the wang family, after zhh

chongqi (reunion: the sound of the providence) covers wu xie’s lung disease and how he recovers from that, set after they pick up xiaoge again from the bronze gate. thunder city and everything.

灯海寻尸&万山极夜 (still updating on wechat) don’t worry about this one since it’s still a WIP lol

btw between sha hai and chongqi there’s also ten years later (a short story) that covers how wu xie and pangzi pick up xiaoge from the bronze gate and take him home

the dramas Do Not Connect To Each Other At All, which the exception of tlt2 & tlt2 pt2 somewhat, but they go in this order:

盗墓笔记 / the lost tomb 1 (2015): covers part 1 but with major OCs and filler, and includes the auction scene from part 8 for some reason, so introduces xiao hua early.

怒海潜沙&秦岭神树 / the lost tomb 2 (2019) technically “explore with the note”: covers parts 2 & 3 but with major OCs and filler, introduces xiao hua & xiuxiu (and hei xiazi briefly) early. last couple episodes also cover the beginning of part 4. not a direct sequel to tlt1 despite being done by the same studio.

云顶天宫 / heavenly palace on the clouds (2021) technically also “explore with the note”: covers part 4 with major OCs and filler (and the same changes carrying over from tlt2). some episodes are identical to the last couple episodes of tlt2. works as a direct sequel only if you ignore the last couple episodes of tlt2 that take place in the snowy mountains. (those episodes of tlt2 were filmed after this drama was filmed, and im still not sure why they dragged the wu xie and xiaoge from tlt2 back to changbai mountain to film those episodes.)

终极笔记 / ultimate note (2020): covers parts 5-8 with minor OCs and minimal filler, also introduces xiao hua & xiuxiu early. the only adaptation that resembles its source material most of the time.

沙海 / tomb of the sea (2018): covers the second sequel with major OCs and filler. includes some bits from zhh and the short story “three days of silence”.

重启之极海听雷 / the lost tomb reboot (2020): covers third sequel with major OCs and filler.

in addition there is the prequel series mystic nine (2016) and side movies for the dramas that the author produced. there is also a single standalone movie--time raiders (2016) that is....well it’s. very strange. it’s fully subbed on youtube if you’re interested?

the best way to watch the dramas is to assume each one is its own self-contained AU set along different points of the dmbj timeline because even the dramas the author himself worked on don’t have continuity LOL (and with the exception of ultimate note & sha hai most of the time, also assume most characters are pretty OOC from the novels).

i uh regret to inform you though, that ultimate note will not be getting a sequel unless the author magically decides to not care about making money anymore and sells the rights to film the finale to linghe or something ^^;;;; it’s....unfortunate bc un is the most highly-rated dmbj adaptation on douban by A Lot, but it’s an adaptation that the author had literally nothing to do with whatsoever.

more information on some of the side movies/stage plays/manhua/donghua here.

summaries of the main novel stories (currently through zhh) here.

edited mtl (some of which has apparently been looked over by native cn speakers) of the novels following where official eng tls end here. (there are many scattered extras as well.)

you can get the official eng tl books/ebooks on amazon or elsewhere(?), but if you have problems purchasing them or like you just dont wanna support amazon or something, dm me off anon. (also i dont want to be mean but frankly the official tls are kinda bad too ^^;;;)

a rough timeline (spoilers galore) for the dmbj novels here. (fair warning im not 100% sure how accurate all of this is--they put three days of silence as 1991 but looking at the info in zhh, it seems like it should have been before the 1950s...but it’s more than fine as a general overview.)

anyway i hope that was helpful in some way? dmbj is a Very Confusing thing to get into ahahaha, one of my twitter mutuals has made a few carrds if you think they might be helpful: book, dramas (slightly out of date bc it says heavenly palace hasn’t aired yet), ultimate note (got its own carrd by virtue of being the only adaptation aside from sha hai sometimes that most og book fans acknowledge lol ^^;;;)

also anon if anything wasn’t clear or if you had more questions feel free to ask again sorry ahahaha im kinda tired rn @.@

#dmbj #shouting into the void #ask #anon #....im kinda tired bc i just finished watching ydtg so i hope that doesnt come across *too much* in this post LOL #and its probably obvious which adaptation im biased towards but after reading the novels i cant really help it

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fostersffff · 2 years

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The Big Gundam Watch, Part 7: Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative

Going in, I was concerned that Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative was going to somehow retroactively tarnish Unicorn. Thankfully, it did not, because this story was kind of nothing, both as a direct sequel to Unicorn and in the greater context of the Universal Century cannon. Not as nothing as the last thing I watched, which was Twilight Axis - Red Trace, but it has the same spirit of that. At the very least, I have more to say about this- both good and bad- than I did that.

Let’s begin with what I have to say the most about, which is how goddamn awful Michele Luio is:

THE SECOND COMING OF RECCOA LONDE:

It’s entirely possible that this comparison will only make sense to me, but I consider Michele Luio to be the inverse of Reccoa Londe, my favorite hatesink. From the moment she betrayed the AEUG chasing the promise of being called a good girl by Scirocco, I was dreading the moment that she was going to be presented as a tragic, sympathetic character, and that dread grew deeper with each atrocity and betrayal she committed. To my surprise, however, that never happened; some characters struggled with deeming her irredeemable or still feeling bad for her, but I never got the sense that I, as a viewer, was supposed to feel anything but scorn. It’s why I wound up coming away from Zeta feeling bizarrely positive about Reccoa despite her still being one of the most petty, despicable characters to date.

Michele Luio, on the other hand, has the exact arc that I feared Reccoa was going to have, where once she’s revealed to be a total sociopath, she slowly has her edges filed down until I can feel the writer nudging me and saying “aw man, you know, Rita AND Michele, both just so tragic, huh?” Yeah, it’s absolutely tragic that they were all abused at the hands of the Titans, but it’s pretty difficult to feel too bad for someone who does the things Michele does. Even if acting like a soulless monster is just how she copes, it doesn’t forgive the fact that she arranged for herself to have the best possible life while blackmailing the Titans, sat on her hands for a decade, and then intentionally turned a neutral colony into a battleground for her own gain.

Like, it’s really hard to believe that she feels too badly about what happens to Rita considering the options she had at her disposal over the years, considering how smart she's established to be, and how Luio & Company were and still are the premier information brokers of this setting. She could’ve just told Stephanie like five minutes after they left “hey, the Titans scammed you, I’m not a Newtype at all, they have the real one back there and I can tell you who it is” because that’s explicitly what she threatens the Titans with. She surely had multiple opportunities to assign people to track down Jona and Rita considering how quickly she earned Woomin and Stephanie’s trust as their ace-in-the-hole diviner. There’s no universe where you can convince me that a company that basically has free reign with Federation secrets lost track of an incredibly powerful and well-known Cyber-Newtype, even if she was sequestered away to a super-duper-top-secret project immediately after the Titans facility was shut down, because they already had information on that facility that led them to adopt Michele. And maybe that’s the point, that everything she tells Jona about doing everything she could was a lie, but if that’s actually the case, she especially doesn’t get to be sympathetic in the end.

What really kills me, though, is how... unnecessary her whole plan is. As revealed by her assistant shortly before their deaths, the true reason she was so desperate to capture Phenex was so she could prove, empirically, that psychoframes are capable of storing human souls, and that in doing so she could say “See? Rita’s technically not dead!” Except, she already knows Rita’s technically not dead, because she tells Jona that she can also hear Rita as a gotcha to make him feel bad about trying to go out on his own. She’s convinced from the outset that Rita is essentially dead, so there’s no other possible explanation for how she’s still communicating with them. The whole part about wanting to study it so she can keep Woomin alive in perpetuity is also a factor, but clearly not anywhere as important to her as Rita and Jona’s forgiveness.

There’s definitely a good character in here, somewhere. “Person who keeps doubling down on atrocities because they need the end to justify the means for the sake of their own conscience” is a great archetype, but having her facade falter at the halfway point and such a flawed endgame ruins any potential the character had, and she isn’t helped by Jona never actually confronting her, either in forgiveness or condemnation. But we’ll talk more about him later.

THE STUFF I LIKED:

The introduction of the Phenex as THE SECRET THIRD UC PROJECT MOBILE SUIT was very dumb and convoluted, especially since the idea as presented in Unicorn was that the suits were based on The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry. That being said, I’d be lying if I said I thought the Phenex wasn’t cool, especially with the shield wings considering how I gushed about the Full Armor Unicorn’s shields. The blue psychoframe highlights are also much more appealing to me than the Unicorn’s red and Banshee’s orange.

Rita/the Phenex as a character is also great. I love the idea of the mobile suit functioning as an avenging spirit, acting on behalf of all the dead Newtypes, trying to safeguard humanity from rushing themselves to a threshold they can’t actually cross yet.

The extremely modular nature of the Narrative Gundam was super interesting. I’m extremely partial to the A-Packs design, and how it looks like a much cooler version of the Kurwenal from Twilight Axis in terms of being a Neo Zeong-style armor made for a Gundam, but all of its other loadouts are also cool.

Speaking of Neo Zeong-style armor, I would be remiss not to point out I was hype as fuck when the Narrative took over the Neo Zeong.

Commander Iago is a cool guy, and in hindsight it’s surprising that he (or a character like him) didn’t show up in Unicorn. “Soldier who witnessed the Axis Shock up close and personal and had his life changed by it” seems like someone who would’ve had a chat with Mineva or Banagher. Then again, maybe he’s better utilized here since it’s more impactful that Banagher beat Full Frontal by just believing in possibility, rather than falling back on anecdotal evidence.

It was fun to see the Titans again, acting as cartoonishly evil as ever. I appreciate the teensy bit of extra worldbuilding where they establish that no, not every single Titan was assembled in the path of the Colony Laser, but since they were integrated in the Federation they were all arrested pretty quickly following the end of the Gryps Conflict.

All the Unicorn cameos are tasteful and well done; no one is worse for wear for appearing in this. Mineva’s keeping abreast of the scumbag politician’s bullshit, Takuya got taken on as a crew member of the new Garenceries, with Zinnerman still at the helm, and in very short order, Certified Good Boy™ Banagher has matured into a supremely confident and capable ace pilot. Perhaps most importantly, Biggest Bitch In The Earth Sphere Martha Vist Carbine was actually arrested!

THE (other) STUFF I LIKED LESS:

Zoltan fucking sucks. Top to bottom, he is just the lamest villain to appear across everything I’ve watched so far, and honestly, that might even extend out past Gundam. First of all, the design is awful: he’s got an e-boy haircut, a sharingan for some reason, and acts like the fucking Joker. At first, I thought this was supposed to be Punished Angelo who went insane after finding Full Frontal’s corpse, which probably would’ve been better than this. I also can’t figure out why he was allowed to get to the position he’s in as lieutenant: the scumbag politician and the woman he’s in contact with on Zoltan’s ship talk at length about how he’s just a failed clone of Char, meaning he possesses none of the desirable qualities of an already horribly flawed man, and anything he might theoretically bring to the table as a Cyber-Newtype pilot is offset by the fact that his inherent mental instability is made worse by his inferiority complex. Even from a motivation standpoint, his whole thing is just Full Frontal but not as good: Full Frontal was a nihilist because humanity didn’t change after witnessing the miracle of the Axis Shock, and Zoltan was a nihilist because humanity didn’t change after hearing the revelation about Laplace’s Box and also he has angst over being a failed clone of Char. The fact that this loser gets a Sinanju, a Neo Zeong, and a parting shot the likes of which we haven’t seen since Scirocco is so genuinely awful. Even the loser from Twilight Axis was less terrible, if only by a matter of degrees.

I have no strong feelings one way or the other about Jona, which would be fine if not for the fact that he’s the protagonist. There’s something to the idea of the protagonist being Just A Guy- he’s demonstrably average, which could be interesting in a setting where the protagonists always turn out to be bursting with Newtype potential, but being average also extends to his personality. All his interactions with other characters are extremely passive: we never see him exploding at Michele (outside of the scene with the Neo Zeong) for every horrible thing she’s done, or desperately trying to reach out to the good in her because he still considers her his friend, or talking to Iago after their confrontation in the hallway about why reaching the Phenex is important to him, or... anything. He’s just along for the ride and happens to be sitting in the protagonist chair.

This is the first time in this series that something has looked noticeably worse than what came before. I honestly probably wouldn’t have even noticed if not for all the Unicorn character cameos, but once I saw Martha Vist Carbine it became incredibly obvious. I don’t have the technical knowledge to even explain why it looks worse- it’s not like they omitted details or drew her incorrectly, it just looks... cheaper, which is especially bizarre when you consider how this was not only much shorter than the entirety of Unicorn, but also made years later.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS:

Far and away the funniest thing that happens in this movie is when Jona is approached by Michele’s assistant and he opens with “I’m gay” to make sure that Jona (and the audience) knows that he’s not simping for Michele- he’s just dumb. This is then punctuated with the reveal that his fucking name is Brick.

One of my first notes was how bizarre it was to have Michele act as a diviner on behalf of Luio & Company, and I initially rationalized it as “ok well the people of Moon Moon interpreted Rasara Moon’s Newtype abilities as divine, so Luio interprets it as divination, sure”. The reveal that it's actually multiple layers of bullshit is a great bit of characterization for Michele that they really should have kept leaning into.

The closer Colony Drops get to looking like Judgment Day from T2, the better, and for as cheap as a lot of the animation in this looks, this is the most intricate and graphic portrayal of the One Year War Colony Drop to date.

Remember what I said in my write-up on Unicorn, about how there are just scenes that kick around in your head despite being relatively unimportant? This one where this group of bystanders get fucking vaporized by a shot from Zoltan might actually be worse than the mom and her baby falling off the fire escape from Unicorn, just because it’s so sudden that most of the people don’t even notice they’re about to die.

I might be reading into this exchange too much, but... is the implication at the end of the movie that when Rita had her vision, it wasn’t just the Colony Drop, but everything up to and including the threat of Zoltan’s Neo Zeong? I’m hoping it isn’t, because that escalation in the scope of Newtype powers is a bit beyond my suspension of disbelief.

IN CONCLUSION:

Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative is a wash. I don’t regret watching it, it’s a perfectly adequate movie, but I also wouldn’t recommend it. A recurring theme in this write-up is me appreciating a concept Narrative presents, but not liking the execution, and that’s applicable to the movie as a whole. A standalone adventure story spinning off the end of Unicorn could have been done well, but instead, it was just done. Not well, not poorly, just... done.

Next up: Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway! Funny enough, Unicorn was so just so damn good that my pressing concerns about the fate of Hathaway post-Char’s Counterattack fell by the wayside, but now that I’m here, I’m really excited! Especially since it’s several years after the events of Unicorn and not, like... one.

#Gundam #Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative #Gundam Narrative #Gundam NT #The Big Gundam Watch #anime #blu-ray #long post

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army-of-mai-lovers · 4 years

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Ok I just finished book 4 and thus the series as a whole, here are my thoughts:

1) first and foremost: Korrasami. It was beautiful. It was gorgeous. I wept. I’m weeping as I write this. It was really gorgeous. I don’t want to criticize it because I know just how big of a moment that was for gay representation in children’s stuff, that it was the blueprint for a lot of the other LGBTQ+ rep in kids’ animation I’ve watched and loved. That said, I do wish that Asami had gotten more character development prior to Korrasami happening. I really don’t feel like I know much more about Asami now than I did at the beginning of the series. I know a lot of stuff with their relationship had to be censored and like, I get it, it was 2014. But the stuff about Asami’s relationship with her father was really interesting and I would have loved for that to have been explored in more depth, and idk, she just had interesting character traits. She’s an ace at pai sho, she’s a female inventor, she’s the only nonbender on Team Avatar. I would have loved to see more of her friendship with Bolin, or what her relationship with Mako looked like post-book 2, or just anything really. It does bother me that Varrick got a whole character arc and Asami was just kind of...there, the whole time. Idk, I think if both Korra and Asami had more and better development it would have been even more amazing and wonderful than it already was. And that’s the perfect segue into:

2) Korra’s book 4 arc!!!!!! if you missed my 3438098908080 liveblogs about it, I loved Korra from the start, and it was really hard to watch her get beaten down time and again, only for her to say that she *had* to go through all that to be “compassionate” when I knew she was compassionate from the moment I met her. The way she was written throughout the show just reeked of racism and sexism, and I wish the writers had seen this awesome character they created, who was strong and fierce and good and powerful from the very beginning, and, to paraphrase @bluberry-spicehead , let her be. She deserved so much better than what the writers were willing to give her. Maybe when I was younger, the idea of having to go through immense suffering to be good would have been appealing, but having been through a lot in the past year, trauma doesn’t make you a better person. If you become a better person, it is in spite of trauma, not because of it. I really think the way they wrote her sends the wrong message and I wish they had done something else (and there was so much more they could do!!! It really was not necessary for them to make her suffer so much and then try to justify it later!!!)

3) in terms of the series as a whole, I definitely think in terms of purely technical things, book 4 was the best season by far. However, in terms of comedy, book 1 was the best season. Simply nothing will beat the Amon is Tarrlok’s secret brother reveal.

4) I meant to have a prediction of who would get a secret sibling reveal this season (since it happened in the other 3) but nobody got one so I guess all my bases were covered.

5) oh speaking of hcs, I predicted at one point or another that all of the villains were robots, and I FINALLY (sort of) GOT IT RIGHT WITH KUVIRA I FUCKING KNEW IT!!

6) Favorite good line: “Kuvira will rue the day she messed with Meelo!” Favorite bad line: It’s a tough call between “Unalaq hired the barbarians” and “Zhu Li, will you do the thing for the rest of our lives?” so I’m just going to honor them both bc they were both the result of absolutely shit writing.

7) Favorite gaang cameo: It was SLIM PICKINGS but I have to go with Katara because she was mostly unproblematic and somewhat consistently written (would have gone to Sokka but I can’t give the lok writers for having fucking killed him even though he was a true king in that flashback scene) (although tbh if he had lived they would have made him a secret war criminal who was a dick to his kids and had a brother we didn’t know about so maybe we dodged a bullet there)

8) Favorite characters: Korra, Asami, Mako, Bolin, Shiro Shinobi, Opal, Tenzin, Meelo, Pema, Grandma Yin, and of course, Prince Wu. Least favorite characters: fucking Varrick (as well as Unalaq, Zaheer, Kuvira, and Tarrlok, but tbh, mostly Varrick) (also can we talk about how so many of the antagonists were Water Tribe???? what was up with that????)

9) the setting was...weird throughout. I posted a lot about wanting to understand how the fuck the United Republic government worked and I’m going to be perfectly real with you I still don’t know. The over-industrialization, the Westernization, the fact that they could not commit to a governmental system (and I never got to see the constitution!) it was all just deeply deeply wrong. I wish that they’d hired more writers of color, especially writers from the cultures they were trying to represent, because I think there was so, so much potential in the idea of a sequel series to ATLA, and they wasted it.

tl;dr the characters of LoK were great, the writing was not, and bryke owes me and everyone else who watched the show an apology for dropping the ball

#longpost #arthur watches lok #lok crit #caps tw #swearing tw

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years

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Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep17

Haha yeah at this point I give up on thinking this is newcomer-friendly, lmao.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut [plus Umineko spoilers]

Well this sure was an episode, lol.

At this point I think that regardless of how the rest of the show goes, it kinda just definitively doesn’t work properly as something for new fans to enjoy. It’s not like it wouldn’t make any sense, but it’s just a straight up inferior experience to watching this as a sequel after the VN. Even with the fast-paced montage of Matsuribayashi plot points, new fans still don’t even know stuff like what Takano’s whole backstory is, what her motives where, and what her actual plan even WAS in the first place beyond just ‘she’s gonna kill everyone somehow for some reason’. And I doubt that we’re going to get much time spent at all on Rena and her backstory to explain what she was doing in Onidamashi.

I think Gou works fine as a sequel to the VN, but as a starting point for new fans it just throws enough spoilers at you to ruin the experience of reading the VN afterward, without enough time spent on those plot points and characters to make it worth it. Though I also have to wonder now if it was even worth spending 13 episodes going over mostly the same events as the original question arcs if immediately afterward they were going to drop all pretenses of this being a remake.

I’m pretty negative about this whole aspect of the show, but I still think that the sequel aspect of it is good and interesting. Even if a lot of that is just me being desperate for any amount of indirect Umineko content, lol.

This episode might have spelled out that Satoko is the second looper on the gameboard, but it seems pretty obvious that there’s a higher power influencing her and giving her the power to loop in the first place. I’m still suspicious of Hanyuu/Featherine, but this episode made me think it’s much more likely that it might actually be Lambda.

I wasn’t really sure about it earlier since it felt like wishful thinking, but the whole beginning scene where Takano apologizes to Rika and says that she wouldn’t believe her even if she explained why she suddenly changed her mind about her mission seems to indicate that Lambda has basically abandoned Takano and revoked her blessing of certainty, and she seems to remember the events of Matsuribayashi anyway, so she’s basically just accepted her defeat. I don’t think it’s as simple as that, though, because of what Takano said about Rika not believing why she changed her mind, so I think it also involves her connection to Lambda.

It might actually be a lot like how Lambda acted in Umineko, where she took over the game master position for a while after Beatrice abandoned the game. This might be Lambda taking over the Higurashi game board because Hanyuu abandoned it, and she’s decided to make Satoko her new piece.

We’ve already seen Satoko talk about how Oyashiro contacted her and made her into his new priestess because of Rika’s sins, so I think Lambda probably just posed as Oyashiro to convince Satoko to become her piece.

It’d also help explain how weird a lot of Gou’s game board feels, and how silly the whole concept of Satoko being a criminal mastermind is, if this is the Higurashi version of Umineko Ep5, where Lambda created a ‘game without love’ where she didn’t technically contradict anything about the story or the characters, but pushed the limits of how out of character she could make them act.

I’ve already felt for a while that Nekodamashi in particular feels more like a case of the culprit just trying to unfairly torture Rika instead of trying to present her with a fairy mystery to solve, and that’d definitely fit with the idea of Lambda just wanting to mess with Rika and manipulating the pieces and the game board to do so.

It kinda risks entering the catch-22 territory of something being ‘intentionally badly written’, in a sense, if the whole point is that the real mastermind is just being sadistic and not trying to establish a fair mystery, but it’s at least something that’s been established before in the overall franchise. I dunno how well it works to have that be the premise of an entire season, though, compared to how only one episode of Umineko worked this way, and it was already established there that Lambda was the new game master at the very start of the episode, so there weren’t any surprises or secrets there.

Either way this could basically just be the hand wave-y explanation for any questions of how Satoko apparently managed to obtain the syringe in each arc and inject all these random people successfully in each arc. And also why it doesn’t even seem to make sense from Satoko’s POV for her to act in such a roundabout and risky way.

Honestly, it kinda reminds me of the whole mentality some people have where they wonder why Rika doesn’t just use her supernatural knowledge of everything going on to perfectly game the system and manipulate everyone. The whole point there is that she’s just a little girl who’s only physically capable of doing so much without outside help, but Lambda might be straight up giving Satoko the unnatural ability to actually do all of this stuff even as a random little girl. Which, again, feels kinda iffy as a writing choice, but it’d also fit with a lot of the commentary Ryukishi likes to do about this type of stuff.

One thing I’m curious about is if the next arc will start off with a new loop, or if this one will keep going. Usually we don’t have loops carry over between arcs, and with how this episode ended we might just find out that Satoko immediately shot Rika, but considering how Rika obviously planned this whole scene to happen, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s able to stop Satoko from shooting her.

I didn’t think this up, but I’ve seen other people theorize that part of the ‘birthday party preparation’ involved Rika explaining everything to her friends off-screen and getting them to help her deal with the whole Satoko confrontation, which I think would make a lot of sense, and it’d make it a lot more likely that the next arc will start with Satoko getting stopped before she can kill Rika. Although if the next arc starts that way, and everyone’s already aware of what’s going on with Rika and Satoko, and we’ve already gone through all the stuff with Takano giving up her plans and leaving the village, I have to wonder what they’d even spend seven whole episodes doing, lol. All the stuff with Takano and the clinic in this episode also makes it feel like this will be the ‘final loop’, since it’d feel a bit weird to have to go over it all again later on, but we’ll see.

I’ve also seen people point out that Satoko’s gun at the end seems to be the same type as Mion’s toy gun, so instead of her getting physically overpowered, we might find out that Rika got Mion to swap her gun with Satoko’s. I dunno exactly how Rika would have known about Satoko having a gun, or how she’d be able to make the swap happen without Satoko realizing it, but I could see it playing out that way.

Anyway, this really feels like it’s shaping up to be a Bern vs Lambda game, where Lambda’s whole goal is just to keep Rika stuck in this loop as long as possible no matter what. And I still feel like if they’re gonna go this hard into the Umineko connections, they should really just go the whole nine yards and have this lead into a proper Umineko anime remake. Otherwise it’d feel like a wasted opportunity where Higurashi fans get disappointed that their series got ‘tainted’ by Umineko-related story baggage, while Umineko fans are disappointed because it’s not the sort of content we’ve been hoping for, and it’s not as substantial as a full remake would be.

It doesn’t help that Okonogi and Amakusa both show up in this episode, lol. I know they both show up in Higurashi, but still. At this point it’d just feel cruel if all this teasing doesn’t actually lead to anything noteworthy.

Also, even in spite of how much this episode explained about the whole mystery, I feel even more confused about what the whole final arc could possibly be about at this point, especially if I’m right about this loop continuing for maybe the entire rest of the next arc. It kinda feels like we’re already at the endgame where both sides have revealed their intentions to each other, and we more or less know exactly what the mechanics of everything going on behind the scenes are. It feels like there isn’t really any mystery left to unravel, aside from maybe the specifics of what happened to Satoko after Matsuribayashi that clearly lead to her getting influenced into doing all this. But we still have seven whole episodes left to go, so clearly there’s a lot left to happen.

Ideally they’re going to find time to actually go over stuff like Rena and Shion’s backstories, and the exact details of what happened in the previous years of the curse killings, and Takano’s whole backstory and what her big evil plan actually was in the first place, so those things don’t just end up left in the VN for new fans to not find out about, but I dunno. Ironically, I don’t think there’s *enough* episodes left to properly go into all that, unless it’s as fast-paced as how this episode went through a bullet point list of details from Matsuribayashi.

There’s still the question of if we might get a second season, but I doubt it. Maybe it could be a one-cour second season, but it already feels like we’re at the end of the story. We’re basically at the equivalent of the end of Minagoroshi, and there was only one more arc after that in the VN. But if we’re making comparisons to the VN, then we’ve still basically skipped over Tsumihoroboshi and Meakashi, lol.

Also, before I forget, it still genuinely bugs me that even though Rika apparently remembered Takano being evil this whole time, and clearly still thought she was evil this whole time, she’s apparently done absolutely nothing to try and investigate or stop her in any of these timelines, and she spent all of Nekodamashi being like ‘wow, I can’t believe people are going unnaturally L5 and killing me while taking about parasites . . . . who could possibly be behind this . . . . . .. . oh well guess I’ll just die lol’. I don’t want to call it a plot hole, but it just feels like genuinely bad writing caused by the unnecessary conflict of Gou trying to appeal to new fans while also being a sequel. But in the end they ended up giving a sparknotes version of Matsuribayashi that spoils Takano being evil anyway, so it feels kinda pointless that they sidestepped the issue so hard up to this point, at the cost of having Rika basically act like an idiot who doesn’t bother acting upon any of the knowledge she has.

Anyway, if we don’t get a full Umineko remake out of this in the end, they should at least just have the next arc turn into full on Umineko shenanigans with logic battles and witches with laser swords and shit.

I might sound like I’m just really negative toward Higurashi in general compared to Umineko, but even though I prefer Umineko, I really like Higurashi, and that’s a big part of why it bugs me so much that they didn’t just commit to this being a proper remake. An actual remake of the VN that has more concise pacing and works better as an anime would be genuinely great in it’s own way, but that’s not what we’ve ended up getting, lol.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi gou #ryukishi please just give me actual new umineko content i'm literally begging you #remember when umineko gold was a thing? lol

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fistsofcurie · 4 years

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Why is Cal the protagonist instead of Cere?

So I was replaying Jedi: Fallen Order recently, and something really stuck out to me. This is going to be long, kinda ranty, and full of spoilers, so analysis is under the cut.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, you play as Cal Kestis, a Padawan who survived Order 66. For reference, Cal looks like this:

In other words, he looks like every other modern white guy video game protagonist:

Except maybe slightly younger than average, and ginger this time (and even that was apparently one of the first things people modded out). Oh and he has a cute droid. This post intends no shade to BD-1, for whom I would die.

Anyway, when we meet Cal at the beginning of the game, he’s living in hiding from the Empire, who would very much like to finish the job they started with Order 66. When Cal’s status as an ex-Jedi is revealed, the Empire sends a couple of Inquisitors after him, and he barely manages to escape with the help of Cere Junda, who looks like this:

Over the course of the game, we learn that Cere also used to be a Jedi - a full Knight instead of a Padawan like Cal, but that she turned away from the Force in the aftermath of Order 66. Eventually (SERIOUS SPOILER WARNING TURN BACK IF YOU CARE ABOUT THIS) it’s revealed that the Second Sister, one of the Inquisitors hunting Cal, is none other than Trilla Suduri, Cere’s former Padawan. Cere left Trilla to care for some younglings they were guarding while Cere herself ran off to try to lead the Empire away. Cere was caught and tortured until she gave up Trilla’s location, and then Trilla was caught and tortured until she became an Inquisitor. When Cere saw Trilla take up that mantle, she tapped into the Dark Side, allowing her to escape, but also prompting her to give up the Force lest she fall completely. Trilla, for reference, looks like this:

This brings us to the main crux of this post, namely, why the hell is Cal even in this game, much less as its protagonist? Trilla, as the main antagonist, is only after Cal because a) he’s a Jedi, so killing or capturing him is pretty much her job as an Inquisitor and b) he’s after the same MacGuffin she is. It’s not personal, it’s business. Any personal edge to the taunts she throws your way throughout the game only comes by way of Cal’s relationship with her former Master. Make Cere the player character, and the conflict with the primary villain immediately becomes hugely more personal, more visceral, the reveal of Trilla’s identity has that much more impact.

True, it is a big part of Cere’s character arc to show that she’s recovered enough from her trauma to be willing to trust Cal, be open with him, and train him, but the opening up and trusting parts could easily be transferred to her relationship with her friend and pilot Greez, aka Space Danny Devito. As for being willing to take on a new Padawan, the primary MacGuffin you’re trying to recover in this game is a holocron containing a list of force sensitive children whom Cal and Cere EXPLICITLY PLAN TO TRAIN AS JEDI. If that isn’t enough of a source of that type of angst, I hardly think Cal “Personality of Wet Tissue Paper” Kestis is going to do the job. If it didn’t get explored thoroughly enough in this game, that’s just more sequel fodder. Instead of (MORE BIG SPOILERS FOR THE VERY END OF THE GAME TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED IT) destroying the holocron to prevent the Empire from hunting the children it identifies, Cere could use find those children. Maybe the next game would have the children themselves as the MacGuffins you’re trying to collect, or maybe it would skip ahead in time to where Cere has already trained some of them up a bit. They could each have their own strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities, and you could play as different characters on different levels depending on what was needed to get the job done.

True, movie canon shows us that there isn’t a thriving Jedi Order up and running at the time of the original trilogy, just isolated hermits like Obi-Wan and Yoda, which is why it’s such a big deal when Luke becomes a Jedi and we assume that, after the fall of the Empire, he’s going to re-found the order. That didn’t stop us from getting characters like Kanan, Ezra, and Ahsoka in Rebels though. (Yes, I know Ahsoka’s not technically a Jedi at that point, but you get my point.) They could easily be operating in an isolated cell somewhere on the Outer Rim or something. Or maybe they get shut down at some point, giving us more fuel for tragedy and feels. The point is, there are ways to handle this that both don’t conflict with canon and also don’t completely invalidate the goal you’ve been pursuing for the whole game. Oh look, the choice of protagonist isn’t my only issue with this game’s plot. Short detour, back to the main point.

You wouldn’t even have to change the main story beats that much. Cere would also have been in hiding, as demonstrated by the fact that she’s still alive, so have her huddled up in some backwater when she gets exposed and attacked like Cal was, forcing her to realize that she’ll never really be able to hide from her past and must face it. Her cutting herself off from the Force mirrors Cal’s damaged connection to the Force, so you could have the necessary video game progression of gaining back various force powers as you move through the game. Cere’s worry about falling to the dark side is much more in line with the traditional Star Wars theme of light vs. dark than Cal’s worry that he’s not good enough because he failed to save his master, Jaro Tapal, and is, in my opinion, more interesting as well.

Hell, speaking of Jaro, I’d take him as a protagonist too. So many species in the Star Wars universe, and when’s the last time we had a video game with a canon protagonist who was anything other than a human? The physical strength and agility he’d have as a Lasat would give the designers room to give the players some cool moves to play with.

Anyway, Cere’s light side/dark side conflict could even give you some interesting story mechanics to play with. Maybe the game allows you to make a final choice whether to try to redeem Trilla (light side) or take revenge on her for hunting you (dark side). Or maybe, in the final boss fight against Trilla, you could choose to tap into the dark side to get a power boost, but in exchange you get a worse ending.

The point is, as far as I can see, there’s literally only upside from the perspectives of both story and game mechanics to making Cere the protagonist of Fallen Order instead of Cal. Feel free to point out anything I might have missed, but that’s how I see it currently. The only thing holding them back would have been the fear that Star Wars fanboys and hardcore gamers wouldn’t have bought the game if it had an older black woman on the box art instead of a young white guy. The depressing part is, they’re probably right.

I will admit, I’m being somewhat hyperbolic here. I did still very much enjoy the game, and Cal was at least a serviceable protagonist, if not an exciting one. He’s just everything we’re used to seeing in a player character, and nothing we’re not, and that’s always going to be disappointing and frustrating when the opportunity to have a kickass Star Wars video game centering on the conflict between two women of color was right fucking there but we didn’t get it and instead they played it safe.

#star wars #jedi fallen order #cal kestis #cere junda #star wars jedi: fallen order #swjfo #sw jfo #cw torture mention #swjfo spoilers #jedi fallen order spoilers

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septembercfawkes · 4 years

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Why Story = Cause and Effect (And How to Utilize That)

Stories are about cause and effect. That's what makes it a story. There is a famous example of this in the writing world:

"The king died, and then the queen died."

This is not a story. It's just stating what happened.

"The king died, and then the queen died of a broken heart."

That is a story. Why? Because it has cause and effect.

All great stories need to have some level of cause and effect. Otherwise, they aren't really stories. (Well, there are maybe some exceptions, but more on that later.) Readers don't want to read about random, unrelated things (most of the time); they want to read stories.

At the starting of a story, the main character should have (near-future) wants and fears. This helps draw the audience in by getting them to look forward to significant, potential consequences, or in others words, stakes. This also gives the character motivation for making choices.

When we make choices, they automatically lead to consequences.

- If I refuse to exercise, I won't have an athletic body.

- If I choose to eat a bunch of sugar, I'll get a sugar high.

. . . which means they have a cause and effect.

Not all causes and effects come from our own choices. We don't live in a void. There are other people who also make choices, there are illnesses, natural disasters, cultures and societies, the laws of physics, etc.

At the starting of the story, the main character is going about his or her life, making choices, until a cause (the inciting incident) challenges the established normal, calling the hero in a new direction. Cause and effect.

From that moment on, cause and effect will get more important in the story. Or at least, it should.

As a story goes on, the consequences and stakes should get bigger and bigger or more and more personal, so that we have that rising action or escalation, that is vital to a good narrative. If the consequences stay small, or even get smaller as the story progresses, it's not going to be a satisfying book.

Still, occasionally I run into manuscripts that are largely lacking a nice sense of cause and effect. Instead, they are just things happening. And I've sometimes found it missing within my own projects. Perhaps this concept seems so simple, that we never give it a second thought.

You see, too often as writers, we think in sequential events, not consequential effects.

Sure, you can escalate conflict without having cause and effect. Maybe in the beginning, your protagonist is sad she didn't get invited to a birthday party. Then in the middle she has to win a state sports competition. Then at the end, she finds out she has cancer. Technically, that is escalation. So it can be easy to fool yourself into thinking the story is gonna be great. (And then you'll likely be confused when it's not quite satisfying.)

Sure, unrelated conflicts like this can escalate. And the conflicts matter--in that moment, for that time. But because they don't tie into other things, they aren't as meaningful, they don't hold as much tension--hope and fear--or stakes. They can almost never draw the audience in as intensely, because the audience can't anticipate or care about what might come next--it's not connected.

So it's almost always better to escalate conflict by amplifying cause and effect. The protagonist is sad she didn't get invited to a birthday party, and so she plots revenge. Carrying out these plots reveals a new side of her to her friends and family, and so it strains their relationships, and so they plan an intervention, and so the protagonist gets sent to a youth camp she hates, and so . . . and onward.

It's sort of like the butterfly effect. One conflict kicks us off (the inciting incident), and through cause and effect, it builds and builds and builds until it's huge by the climax. That's what's satisfying.

As a Southpark creator teaches, writers shouldn't be saying "This happens, and then this happens." They should be saying, "This happens, and therefore this happens."

This gives the story a sense of cohesion. This is because cause and effect tie everything together. While hooks and stakes and tension get readers to look forward, and draw them in. Cause and effect is the bridge from immediate past, to present, to those futures--linking every event in a chain. When events are connected, the audience cares, because they can predict.

Ideally, each segment of the story is feeding into the next one, which is bigger. Each act in a story, is feeding into the next, bigger one. Personally, I like to think of it as a small fish feeding a bigger fish. Act I is the small fish, but it feeds and nourishes Act II, which is the medium fish, which feeds and nourishes Act III, which is the big fish. Or if you don't like to think of acts, think of it as the beginning, the middle, and the end. Each fish is swallowing up the smaller fish before it. The little fish feeds into the big fish.

All easier said than done.

BUT, the more you understand this, the easier it eventually becomes to brainstorm and structure a story. Because if everything is feeding into something else, then you are largely looking at how one cause leads to other effects, which are in turn causes to other effects, which are in turn causes to other effects--and on and on until you get to the climax. So it's not about just trying to come up with ideas from a blank page, it's about looking at what you already have for potential consequences.

In the process, you will find that there are multiple potential outcomes for the same event, so the question doesn't become "What do I have happen next?" It becomes "Which do I have happen next?"

In such cases, consider these things:

- Which effect is most interesting?

- Which effect carries the most meaning?

- Which effect carries the most tension?

- Which effect leads to the most future effects or the biggest problems?

- Which effect has the strongest connections to the other effects in play?

- Which effect is most relevant to the theme?

- Which effect best plays into the character arc?

- Which effect forces the most change or growth?

- Which effect best fits the story I'm telling?

Also, take into account the story structure you are using (if you are using one). It can guide you on what to pick. If it's time for me to have a pinch point, then I should pick the effect that fits as a great pinch point. If it's nearly time for The Ordeal, then I should pick the effect that leads into that.

It's funny, because often when we learn about such things, we don't want to feel "boxed in," but in reality, all of these things are just tools to help us navigate and make satisfying decisions, which leads to stronger stories. And better yet, they will actually lead you to brainstorm stronger, richer, more powerful ideas, leaving you to ask "Which happens next?" and not "What happens next?" Because the most effective brainstorming doesn't happen in a void. It happens when you have guidelines and pull from what you already know about your story. Because if anything can happen, then nothing really matters.

Cause and effect are key to satisfying stories--from the first bits of brainstorming, to tying up the loose ends during the denouement.

Consider: One Cause that Leads to Multiple Effects

It's also worth noting (and helpful) that one cause can actually lead to multiple effects in the story. For example, the inciting incident may affect each key character differently, leading them to make different choices, which lead to other effects. It need not always be one to one (one cause = one effect). In fact, often it's capitalizing on multiple, possible effects that makes a story more riveting, more of a page-turner. But even as you branch off from the same event, ideally, each of the effects are still going to play into, connect, and affect each other.

For example, in The Hunger Games, the Reaping in District 12 is the inciting incident, but it affects Katniss, Peeta, and even all of Panem, differently. Katniss decides she will do everything it takes to try to survive for her sister. Peeta tries to accept that he'll die, but he wants to die as himself--while doing all he can to keep Katniss alive. Katniss also can't wrap her head around the fact that she'll be in the arena with Peeta, who once saved her life. The Capitol is first impressed by these tributes, and then enamored with their "love story." What Katniss does, what Peeta does, and what the Capitol does all feed and connect into each other--leading up to the climax, which incorporates all these elements and affects each key player differently--what the Capitol views as an act of love, the Districts view as an act of defiance, Katniss views as an act of survival, and Peeta (also) views as an act of love, but just as importantly, an act that shows the Capitol can't change him--all of which affects the second book in the series, so their story continues to build . . . and build . . . and build.

Escalate cause and effect to satisfyingly escalate the conflicts.

Look for opportunities where one cause can lead to multiple, significant effects.

This sort of thing can be particularly key in writing sequels. Many sequels fall flat because they try to create something entirely new, instead of allowing what happened in the last book to feed into the cause and effect trajectory of the next book. They simply start a new thread, instead of allowing the end of the last book to have a ripple effect on the world. (This of course depends in part on the type of series you are writing.)

Possible Exceptions

In certain forms of highbrow literature, a lack of cause and effect is the point. Some people have argued that because life is random, stories should be random too, with just things happening and no real meaning. There is probably a place for that kind of outlook, but if you want to write commercial fiction or genre fiction (which is what my blog is pretty much all about), this is often a terrible approach. Also, while we don't have control over everything in real life, cause and effect is real. And our personal choices do have consequences.

Some types of stories need less cause and effect than others. Like perhaps in humorous slice-of-life stories. I think Napoleon Dynamite is a good example. A lot of it is just funny stuff happening. BUT, I bet if you watched it again today, you'd notice that there actually is a bit of a story structure to it, and some through threads of cause and effect. And if you do write this kind of story, it needs to be super entertaining for your target audience to be successful.

And many stories that don't seem to have much of a cause and effect in the plot, actually have powerful cause and effect in the character. As the plot happens, it effects how the character grows, so that she arcs in a significant way by the end. So the cause and effect mostly exists on a more personal level.

But, with that all said, the majority of stories will be more satisfying when they really utilize cause and effect on a plot level.

How Does this Affect the Writing Process?

It's funny, after I wrote a draft of this post, I read Story Genius by Lisa Cron (which I definitely recommend), and in it, she talks a lot about cause and effect (and nails it). But she said something I've personally felt for a while: The more you utilize cause and effect, the more you will likely need to write your story in order. Because if you are fully utilizing cause and effect, then what happens in the previous scene affects the next scene. Some writers like to jump around, writing whichever scene they want to, and then plug that scene in the appropriate spot, and take a pass at completion to link everything together. If that works for you, who am I to say it's wrong?

But for me, and the way I write, I admit I have found this confusing. How do I know all the effects a scene at the end of the book needs, when I haven't yet nailed the cause-and-effect trajectory of the middle? So I generally prefer to write down the ideas I have for future scenes, and maybe even snippets, but I don't really "write" them until I get there. Do what works for you, but I thought this was worth mentioning.

#Writing tips #writing tips and tricks #writeblr #writing reference #writing advice #fanfic #writing a book #cause and effect

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countdown-to-destruction · 4 years

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Inuyasha Sequel: a rant

Put this up this earlier on a post I re-blogged, tried to edit a part or two where I didn’t like the way I had phrased it, and ended up messing up the whole format I wrote this in. Luckily I wrote this as a draft earlier anyways! So I did a some fixing and now I’m just copy-pasting it again and making it a text post instead. This will be very long and a little nit-picky but I wanted to make a post ever since I heard about the upcoming sequel to Inuyasha, Hanyō no Yashahime. I did put a TLDR at the end for those who don’t want to read everything. Not sure how many people in the fandom still follow me and will see this, as it's been a long time since I was actually active in the fandom, but it's hands-down both my favorite manga and anime of all time and I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately so I had to post something. Before reading this be sure to read all of the translated character bios for Towa, Setsuna, and Moroha so that this makes sense.

When I first heard that Inuyasha would be getting a sequel I was excited! But after reading up on it, to be completely honest I'm not feeling this sequel anymore. I know it’s an unpopular opinion but hear me out. Firstly, it seems like Rumiko is mostly involved in the character design aspect and the writing is up to Katsuyuki Sumisawa. The music will be produced by Kaoru Wada which is great! And from what I’ve seen and read online a number of others who worked on the original series will reunite so hopefully the story will go well. However, knowing Rumiko isn't personally writing and not knowing how much input she has or will give makes me unsure about watching. The original Inuyasha anime followed and was based off of the events in the manga, and there was no manga prior to this for it to be based on. Depending on what happens this could be an alright sequel or a total miss. Unfortunately sequels in general are known to be disappointing in some way.

Secondly, if I hear anything about Rin being the mother of Sesshomaru's twin daughters I'm out. This part will be a SUPER long and in depth explanation on why I think this way, feel free to skip if you're not interested. Please don't come for me on this, I'm here to explain my thoughts and feelings on the sequel and the theories around it so far, not start an argument. I'm more than aware that there's plenty of controversy out there on this pairing and personally I do not support it. I never saw their relationship as more than a friendship, or something akin to child and guardian as Sesshomaru and Jaken are basically Rin's caretakers up until she goes to live in the village with Kaede. He definitely cares for her deeply but I can't see it in a romantic way, being that Sesshomaru isn't even a character focused on romance to begin with. He learns compassion through Rin's second death but that doesn't mean he loves her romantically. As a reminder his main goal is to seek power and be powerful, and it's stated that he needed to learn compassion and grief in order to mature. It's what helped him learn to wield the Tenseiga at its full potential. In addition, she was really young when they first met and still was when she went to live with Kaede. The idea of Sesshomaru (an adult) having romantic feelings for a kid under ten years old (around eleven at the end of the series, and still a literal child in all ways) and waiting for her to age with the intention of marrying her sits totally wrong with me. Age wise I realize that Inuyasha is decades older than Kagome and that his father was much older than his mother, Izayoi, as well. The difference here is that Kagome was a teen when she met Inuyasha (who not just physically, but more importantly mentally was also a teen) and clearly Izayoi was old enough to conceive Inuyasha and give birth. As far as the audio dramas (more specifically "Asatte") go they're generally considered as an outtake reel and are essentially parodies, or a form of satire. Some will debate on this but realistically there’s plenty of reasons this is true, and those who take the time to properly check them out understand that. For me I've always had a headcanon that at some point in her teen years Rin would inevitably develop a one-sided crush on Sesshomaru and that he would ultimately set boundaries and reject her, seeing her as more of a close companion than a love interest and wanting her to live with someone she can grow old with. He gave her the choice to follow him and it's most likely that she would, but I think that once she began aging he would want her to have somewhere to settle, given that he enjoys roaming and seeking out other powerful beings to battle. It's strange to me that they decided to give Sesshomaru hanyō/half-demon children in general but based on the artwork we've seen it's fair to guess that they might have made Sesshomaru and Rin a pairing in this sequel.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to clarify that if you ship them together I'm not writing this here because I want to hate on your ship for no reason, or in order to create an argument on if the pairing makes sense, these are my thoughts and opinions on the matter and I’m voicing them because it’s what I believe. I already know that somebody won’t like this and will take it personally. People usually say that once Rin is an adult the pairing is acceptable but I disagree. I find it quite creepy that someone would think it would be alright for an adult to wait around for a kid to grow up with the intention to marry and/or sleep with them. Watching from a distance is the same exact thing, after making an impression on the child... let’s not normalize this. In this situation it would be grooming. We all have our own opinions when it comes to our ships and fandoms and I try to respect that but I can’t get behind this one.

Next we have the apparent lack of parental figures for the heroines. Where are the original Inuyasha characters at? Moroha's character bio says she barely knows her parents (Inuyasha and Kagome, our former main protagonists) and has been alone since she was young! It makes me think either something has happened to them or some kind of bizarre event separated them. And sorry, not related, but why does she transform by PUTTING LIPSTICK ON?? That part threw me for a loop.

When it comes to Setsuna and Towa their parents are absent too. I find it difficult to believe that Sesshomaru wouldn't keep track of his children given how he treats Rin and reacts to her going missing in any capacity. Especially if he happened to be fond of whoever their mother is. One daughter works as a taijiya/demon slayer for Kohaku and the other mysteriously transports to Kagome's era and is raised by Sota (I thought we had finished with the time jumps when the well closed but apparently not. When the Bone Eater's Well closed after Kagome's return it gave a sense of finality and closure to the story, and showed that Kagome had chosen where she was most happy and felt she belonged. I think that bringing the theme of time travel back into the sequel makes it feel repetitive, like something right out of a predictable fanfic. Props to Sota for taking in and raising a child who showed up out of nowhere though).

Another thing that came to mind when I read these character bios was why Inuyasha and Kagome's daughter and Sesshomaru's daughters are the exact same age. Of course there's nothing wrong with that. It only struck me as odd because suddenly everyone is having kids at the same time. And so far there's no mention of other characters like Sango, Miroku, Shippo, Jaken, Kaede, or Miroku or Sango's three children or where they are. One might expect that a story focused on the children of some of the original Inuyasha's main characters would feature appearances from those who had important roles in the previous series and their children. Which brings me around to wondering what made twin daughters a trend? Two sets of twin girls is a unique choice (Sango and Miroku's twin daughters. For such a small group of parental characters, what are the odds of two sets of twin girls? Where is the creativity and again why the repetition?).

Lastly, Sesshomaru's daughters lack some of the common yōkai/demon characteristics we see on Inuyasha and other characters. Their ears are human, and they have no markings or otherwise (that I noticed) with the exception of Setsuna's mokomoko/fur which is similar to Sesshomaru's. So perhaps they take more after their human mother? Given that Inuyasha seemed to inherit strong genes from his father it's interesting that they did not. Their ages also interest me as they appear to age the same way as humans do. Yōkai/demons are known to have a longer lifespan than humans and appear to slow down or almost stop aging at some point. Perhaps this confirms that the slowdown in aging occurs once they reach the equivalent of a human teen?

Overall Inuyasha was a fantastic manga and great anime on its own, and I never got the feeling that it needed a sequel. As a stand-alone it was everything it needed to be. I thoroughly enjoyed both formats of the original, though I do have a tendency to disregard certain parts of the anime. I always preferred the manga more when the anime dragged out certain scenes (Shichinintai/Band of Seven arc for example) or straight-up excluded, changed, and added others. Taking that into consideration the sequel might end up being the same for me in that way, but rather than one scene that plays out for too long or an excluded, altered, or unnecessary added scene, if it’s not any good I’ll simply disregard it altogether. When the anime comes out I certainly plan to try watching it out of loyalty to the fandom, and due to the fact that it's "technically" canon (without Rumiko being the writer I don't necessarily consider it canon, much like how some folks do or do not consider the movies canon) but I get the feeling that I'll wind up giving up on it in disappointment.

TLDR; Overall I'm left questioning if the sequel is worth watching (for me) given what I've read and heard so far, but nonetheless I will give it an optimistic try! I'm currently wondering how much we'll see of the original Inuyasha characters, if we get to find out what happened to them, if the number one pairing I'm not fond of will make an appearance (and cause me to drop the whole thing), and questioning parts of the character backstories and designs (why is there a repetitive and recurring theme of time travel and does it end up hindering or ruining the story, why do the protagonists all lack parents, and why do the hanyō/half-demon characters lack common yōkai/demon traits and does it make them more human than demon?).

#inuyasha #hanyo no yashahime #sesshomaru #please don't be sessrin #kagome #a feudal fairytale #internal screeching #my thoughts #my opinions #unpopular opinion

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world-without-authors · 3 years

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15th anniversary of our madness!

Yes, you read that right. Today, April 13th 2021, marks the 15th anniversary of when I was crazy enough to bring out the idea of a crazy roundrobin crossover on the Moony Witcher Forum.

When on that day, April 13th 2006, I made a post with the general idea for Mai Dire Fine I never thought I would be starting a saga that would be still ongoing 15 years later.

But here we are, with me and Aelit still working on its latest sequel of sorts, The World without Authors. Compared to back then, our writing skills improved a lot (Mai Dire Fine was not a good story) and, while there’s always more we can still learn, we are proud of our improvement.

So, where are we? We published recently the 10th chapter of The World without Authors, which is currently around 69.000 words – we’re already closing in towards Blank Sprite‘s length (77.000) and that’s just part of the first arc, Scattered Shards. Adding in the previous stories, we’re past 320.000 already.

Even with The World without Authors‘s “all-stars” cast, we still only have a total of five characters from Mai Dire Fine, only three of which (Sergio, Nikki and Kathleen) were part of the main cast as the other two (Faith and Virgilia) were introduced towards the end… well, technically there’s a sixth character, the mysterious “Professor”, but his identity is spoilers as of now. I believe there might be enough hints between The World without Authors and my older behind the scenes post for you to be able to guess his identity already, but the reveal is meant to be a nasty surprise that will set up the second and third arcs, Venezia Immortale and The Dove and the Crow. Yes, we’re planning (well… sort of planning) that far!

But enough of that, let’s head to the celebration specials!

Unfortunately, the Q&A session was a complete failure. We didn’t receive any question by the deadline, but the mailbox is still open! Feel free to ask us anything, we’ll make a Q&A post as soon as the question come in, and we’ll keep it updated every time new questions arrive.

We still have a few more goodies, though. The first is a bit of an experiment on my part, I took one of my early PPC missions, A Very Awkward Exorcism, alongside a couple scenes from the interlude set chronologically just before it, Planes, Guns, Clones and other usual PPC Stuff, and gave them a complete makeover into a comic. Yes, I made what I believe might be the first full PPC mission in comic form! You can download it in PDF format (Trigger warning for rape, contains some partial nudity) here. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Another thing I made is a special anniversary illustration, in which our characters, and a few we borrowed, from all over our works enjoy some partying. With all the things happening due to the Unravel they deserve some off time, don’t you think?

Let’s start with the back row, left to right.

First one is Ai Minase, from Koikatu. She has the distinction of being the “adopted canon character” of The World Without Authors – while we have other canons working with Strike Dove, she’s the only one who became part of the main cast on a deep level. While Hayate Yagami, her crew, the Razgriz and Long Caster also work with my main cast, they’re more of external allies. Her dress looks a bit like a tablecloth, but that’s a canon-ish outfit of hers: while she never wears it in her route, it is in her character card in the slot that gets used during dates in normal gameplay.

Next to her we have Keiko Caterina Turbo, Sergio and Nikki’s daughter with her own PPC spinoff, Wings of Canon: Second Strike. She is also the only survivor of the Second Strike cast, having lost Shiro and Saki in the Unravel, and as such the role of representative of her series is all on her. She also doesn’t like skirts, at all, why do you ask?

Then we have Hajime Irene Turbo, Keiko’s half sister/alternate incarnation from the timeline in which Sergio got together with Ami instead. She’s an original The World without Authors character, but still related to characters from my previous works. Fun fact: Keiko and Hajome’s birthday, April 13, in indeed based on the day and month we began Mai Dire Fine. If we consider HQ Standard Time (the PPC’s timeline) to coincide with the real world, they turned two years old today.

Next is Hajime’s mother, Ami Tanegashima. Mentioned first in I don’t like luxury cars to pave her way for her posthumous role in Blank Sprite, we can consider her the representative of my Blank Sprite original characters here. She’s now stuck with the absurdity of not only having a daughter she never thought she could have, but also of said daughter being currently only four years younger than her. Considering Ami’s small frame, there will likely be plenty of times in which she’s mistaken for Hajime’s younger sister… also, now that she’s 20 years old and of drinking age in Japan, she discovered she actually likes alcohol. And can deal with it surprisingly well despite her light build (as opposed to Sergio and Nikki who both can’t hold their liquor)… yes, she had more than a few glasses here. Luckily, she doesn’t drink very often.

Toasting with her is Aya Kibokami, the “fragment” that split off Madoka Kaname at the end of Blank Sprite. As such, she’s here as a representative of canon characters of Blank Sprite. Due to a certain scene of Madoka Magica, in which Madoka expresses a desire to go out drinking with her mother (who really enjoys drinking) once old enough, there is fanon of her eventually developing the same taste for liquor. While we’ll likely never know if the canon Madoka would, Aya is the other heavy drinker of my cast and here is depicted finally having a toast (or two… or a few…) with Ami to celebrate the success of their “Save Sergio and Homura from their spirals of self-destruction by making them defeat Vera and save Madoka together” master plan.

And, of course, fussing over Aya’s excessive drinking we have Kuroko Tenshimi, AKA the “split fragment” of Homura Akemi retaining the memories of the Blank Sprite Incident. While her and Aya haven’t featured yet, they did make it to the Unraveled World. However, I don’t plan on making them part of the main cast yet (in fact, I’m planning to reduce the amount of characters we’re following as the cast is getting too big), and I’m actually considering having them star in their own The World without Authors spinoff, but nothing set in stone yet. Oh, and fun fact about them, they did already have a bit of starring of their own as they were the hosts of the Third PPC HQ Hunger Games. How Nutmeg TV managed to get hold of them for that will forever remain a mistery.

Next, a character very few of you are likely to be familiar with. Nina De Nobili, the title character of the Nina, the child of the Sixth Moon book series. Acting as a representative of the Mai Dire Fine canon characters here, she’s been chosen since, as I said in the past, we started Mai Dire Fine on her author’s forum, and even received encouragement from her to keep writing at one point… despite the fact we were basically butchering her work. However, everyone has to begin somewhere, and Moony Witcher (real name Roberta Rizzo) knew that, so I’m glad she didn’t shoot down our hopes – I might not be here now with a 300.000+ words saga under my belt otherwise. Nina is not planned to reappear in the Unraveled Worlds, as she’s from a series intended for children that wouldn’t mesh well with our current plots.

The little guy sitting over the counter doing karaoke is Conan Edogawa from Detective Conan (anyone insisting on calling the series Case Closed can leave now). He’s again a canon character featured in Mai Dire Fine, but there are plans to involve him and some other characters of his series in the third arc. Also, as you can guess by Nina’s reaction, he’s a terrible, terrible singer.

Leaning on the couch we have Hiro Shirogane, our Gundam pilot. He’s a fully original character created for The World without Authors whose original concept was made by Aelit, although I was the one developing his backstory and relationship with Miksa. I admit that for a while we weren’t too sure about what to do with him, but I hope his current subplot will be enjoyable.

And now, the front row. Leftmost is Hanami, Nikki’s alternate from Kathleen’s alternate timeline (and as such a The World without Authors original). She’s been adopted by the Kinomotos (as she’s also an alternate of Sakura) and is now living with them. Something that debuted in this illustration are the glasses: those are her timeline’s Sergio, and she doesn’t actually have a need for eyesight correction. She had the lenses replaced with fake ones, and wears them due to them being one of the few things she has left of him, though they’re also a good way to differentiate herself from her “sisters”.

Then we have Sakura Kinomoto from Cardcaptor Sakura herself. If we go by name only, her first appearance in my works would be Mai Dire Fine, but that particular Sakura ended up becoming Nikki so it is safe to assume her first appearance was actually in the first mission of Wings of Canon, my main PPC spinoff, titled Don’t Forget The Canon, and she has been confirmed alive in the Unraveled World, in which she is now legally Nikki and Hanami’s younger sister. As in the comic I posted above, her hair is actually lighter than Nikki or Hanami’s as most CCS media have her with a light shade, but Nikki and Hanami both derive from the 1998 anime that had a darker brown as Sakura’s hair color.

Next to Sakura is Syaoran Li from the same series, who instead did appear as himself in Mai Dire Fine. He was badly OOC though, and if the The World without Authors incarnation of him does remember Sergio, things might a bit tense between them at first… though, hopefully, just until he gets explained that no, the “Sakura” Sergio was in love with was actualy Nikki and there’s no need to be jealous.

Then we get to Kathleen Leone. She is not the Mai Dire Fine incarnation of the character, but an alternate made for The World without Authors. Despite that, she started considering the main timeline Sergio as her own brother even before he had to kill her timeline’s, due to the latter’s descent into madness. We haven’t been able to give her much space until now, due to the action being mostly in the air, but that will change soon. I won’t spoiler anything, but Chapter 11 will be a big turning point in the story.

Of course, holding arms with her is Faith Leone, Everything I said about Kathleen applies about her too, as they’ve arrived in the Unraveled World together. We haven’t shown much on our plans to develop her so far, but trust us: we’re going to both fill in more of her bakcstory, and give her chances to shine soon.

Cutting the cake together we have Sergio Turbo and Nikki Cherryflower, both of which made their first appearances in Mai Dire Fine and appeared in all sequel works. For as much grief the Unraveled World is bringing them, it is arguable they’ve gained more than they have lost, as they’ve both got their families back thanks to it. Fun fact: their outfits are loosely based on the ones they wore during Chapter 7 of Blank Sprite.

Last but not least, Corolla. Introduced in Don’t Forget The Canon, she’s my most successful character. Defined by Aelit “Kathleen, but written well” way before we started working on The World without Authors, it isn’t a suprise they synergize so well together… much to Sergio and Nikki’s dismay. Here, is she more excited for the cake, or because they are cutting it together like it was a wedding cake? Probably both.

And that’s it, 15 years of writing, condensed in one image. We hope you’ll keep following us in the future!

#world without authors #blank sprite

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zerochanges · 3 years

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2020 Favorite Anime

I am sure I don’t have to exactly spell it out that 2020 was a different year, we all know the spiel now. It was in particular a bad year for me for a lot of personal reasons on top of the whole world wide pandemic thing killing millions and shutting down business and and all our hobbies--so I really was straight up not having a good time. It’s because of that I honestly didn’t really keep up with a lot of my hobbies this year so when it comes to choosing my favorite anime and games of 2020, I don’t have as much as I usually would.

So this year I decided to just say screw it, there are no rules. I usually try to impose some on myself every year for my lists: rules like no sequels, no long running shows, no shows that technically started last year, only new content from this year and not older stuff I watched/played this year but came out from a prior one. This time, there are no holds barred. I am just going to list my top whatever the hell I feel like listing. So starting with anime and in my usual alphabetical order; here we go.

The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?

Maybe a guilty pleasure? Maybe I just enjoy some trashier shows? It’s hard to say. There is nothing that great about 8th Son, it’s very bland and doesn’t stick out amongst the million other isekai (another world) power fantasy series that are all the rage now and yet there is a strange draw to it. Perhaps it’s because almost all the isekai elements in the series feel more forced than anything else, like they are just tacked on to appeal to modern audiences.

8th Son honestly feels more like a good old fashion fantasy series from the 90’s that just had to add isekai elements in it to appeal to kids today. I really enjoyed it for that aspect. The power fantasy isn’t too out of control (although the protagonist is quite strong), and there is no real end goal or attempt to return to your previous life. The protagonist Wendelin is more or less just cool with how things are now. Instead it focuses on his growth as a mage and how he tries to navigate the political intrigue of this feudal world being one of the youngest born in a noble family with no clear line of succession to take over yet being the most talented and magically gifted child of said family.

Ascendance of a Bookworm

Proving that not all isekai series have to be a power fantasy, Ascendance of a Bookworm plays out more like an educational take on medieval times, think something among the lines of Spice and Wolf, if you will. One day Motosu Urano wakes up in the body of the small child Myne in a fantasy world much like medieval Europe but with a few other elements like magic and sorcery. While at first that may sound like a high flying adventure it really isn’t. The series is more about following the average life of a peasant in this world and how far out of reach literature is to them, given the lack of printing press and the like. Urano now Myne tries her best to create books for the common people and spread literature, a herculean task considering the insane douchebaggery of the higher caste in this world. But armed with modern day knowledge of the 21st century Myne is able to create modern conveniences and wow most people around her.

Black Clover

So I am going to include long running shows now this year, get over it. Black Clover has been a favorite of mine in recent years. Out of the modern Jump battle series I find myself more and more drawn into Clover (and also my one true love, the ever underappreciated World Trigger) than the other more popular ones that seem to rule all the anime conversations today. Since I was following the series dubbed as it aired on Toonami this year brought me the end of the first part of the series; finally seeing the epic conclusion of Clover Kingdom’s long standing battle with the Eye of the Midnight Sun and revealing some pretty great and shocking twists behind the war of elves and humans along the way.

This finale was fantastic and honestly while I am glad to see the series continue on and grow from there, and look forward to seeing more of this new second part of Clover that focuses on a war with the Spade Kingdom, I absolutely would not have complained if the whole thing ended right here with this story arc. It wraps up so beautifully and is a compilation of three great years of episodes.

BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt so I’ll Max Out My Defense

Bofuri is not a series I thought I would enjoy as much as I did but it really won me over. Essentially just a ‘cute girls do cute things’ kind of show but with a twist of it being in an MMO game, there is something about it that made it so comfy and easy to watch. There’s always something enjoyable about watching the protagonist Maple, an absolutely clueless newbie at video games continue to be the bane of existence to the developers and admins of the game as she constantly breaks it and becomes insanely overpowered on a regular basis all from her own cluelessness.

As the title suggests she is the only person in the world to get scared of taking damage in a video game and puts all her stats into defense and literally nothing else entirely. After so much grinding the girl is such a tank she can just walk through enemies to kill them. It’s fun little things like this that make the show always worth a chuckle as her legendary player status continues to rise while in reality she just has no clue how to play RPGs whatsoever.

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations

If you think Black Clover had a great run of episodes this year in 2020 just wait until you see what Boruto had to offer. While not a perfect year, the series did take off for about 2 months thanks to a pandemic hiatus, once it came back it was stronger than ever. We came out of the gates running and kicked off the return of Boruto with a fantastic 20+ episode long story arc centered on introducing the main group of villains in the series, the Kara. The world of Boruto became much bigger and much darker, and the series in the last year has started to bring in a lot more manga content and moving at a brisker and faster pace, changing the status quo up quite a lot. Watching the New Team 7 grow so much and rise to these challenges was rewarding and I am so excited for the vessel story arc teased at the latest Jump Festa this December.

Ultimately though their first encounter, crushing defeat, and subsequent rematch with Deepa; a new anime only member of Kara meant to introduce the organization to anime viewers was an insane show de force of animation and one of the best battles in 2020 anime, dare I say. These kids are growing into great warriors and the stakes have been raised so much.

Cardfight!! Vanguard Gaiden IF

The 2018 reboot of the Vanguard series saw not only the card game get refreshed but the television anime as well. Dubbed the V Series by fans thanks to all the new card serial numbers starting with a V post reboot, these last two years have been fun and full of fan service for long time viewers of the anime. Gaiden IF is the final season of this reboot before the fourth entry of the franchise Overdress begins in 2021, and was a very strange and experimental one at that. Gaiden IF holding true to its name was a gaiden, or spinoff of the series that wasn’t necessary in the same canon as the regular show and more fascinating had zero card fights during the entire show--instead being one huge parody of card game animes in general and the beloved cast of characters the series has built over its ten year run.

It’s quite hilarious and a great round of fun, especially since there isn’t a main character in sight. Gaiden IF is carried entirely by a cast of side characters and former villains now taking over the role of protagonist. I’ve never seen a show go for an entire season with such minor characters playing such a huge role and that is one of the best aspects of it. Every week watching Ibuki Kouji, one of the most feared and powerful villains in the series being tormented and kicked around as a would-be hero now honestly carries the entire show.

But really, this was one of the first anime to air post pandemic hiatus and it was so refreshing to have Vanguard back. Every week it reminded me how much I loved the franchise and anime in general, it was such a delight to finally have something enjoyable back in my life after such a grueling pandemic hiatus of nothing.

Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken (2020)

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think there would be a modern adaptation of Dai no Daibouken, or The Adventures of Dai as it is being called in English now. This was one of my all time favorite Jump manga growing up and I always thought the original unfinished 1991 anime was the best we were ever going to get as far as animation goes, so to see this beautiful new series with its fantastic storyboarding and animation, great use of CG mixed in with hand drawn, and what seems like an outright declaration from the series itself that it will adapt the series in its entirety this time, it’s all too much.

This new Dai adaptation is like a dream anime that was made just for me. Every Saturday morning I giddily log on to watch the new episode just like being a kid again with Saturday morning cartoons. If you are sleeping on this show, don’t! You won’t regret watching it, Dai was one of the all time great Shonen Jump properties of the 90’s and is ready to show kids today what that era has to offer!

Gundam Build Divers Re:rise Season 2

Rerise was hands down one of my favorite shows last year when the first cour aired, and this year is no different either, dare I say once again this was probably my favorite show of the whole year. It’s hard to really go into what made this second cour so good without flat out spoiling all the best parts, and all the character development, and all the amazing battles, but suffice to say, this may be one of the best Gundam shows of the entire decade, Build series or not. Hell I ain’t afraid to say this kicked G-Tekketsu (Iron Blooded Orphans) ass this way to Sunday, I don’t care that this is a toy commercial for a much younger audience. Basically, watch Rerise, it’s going to be a great time.

If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die

This was another series that I expected very little from but ended up really enjoying each week. The basic premise is pretty simple, a super fan obsessed with an idol (singer) goes to insane lengths to support her and thinks her love will never be reciprocated but maybe it just might be. It’s kinda strange and an unusual romance series that isn’t really all that big on romance. In fact it seems to be much bigger on being informative about idol fan culture and nerd culture in general and poking fun at that while never being too mean spirited.

I think that’s the charm of this one. These are by all extent weird kinda creepy people that are obsessed over young girl singers but it never demonizes its cast for that nor does it ever go too far in the power fantasy of them ‘getting the girl’. It’s about the struggle of fan life and the tightknit and utterly bizarre groups of friends you can make in a fandom--and also maybe some love might happen along the way.

Jujutsu Kaisen

Another big modern shonen jump battle manga got its chance to be animated this year, and this time courtesy of studio Mappa who are the real stars of this party. Everything about Jujutsu Kaisen feels like Mappa throwing down the gauntlet and trying to one-up the highly praised and beloved Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba from last year that wowed everyone with UFOtable’s signature beautiful animation. It’s very fascinating to see the insane levels of gorgeous jaw dropping action set pieces between these two series, both raising the bar to ridiculous levels in their own ways. On top of the animation front though are some very easily lovable characters, a much darker feeling supernatural story than one may expect, and probably Crunchyroll’s best dub produced in 2020.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken is another series from beloved auteur Masaaki Yuasa. Bringing with it his signature style and wonderful animation, his hardworking compatriots at studio Science Saro deliver something truly special, an anime about why anime is great and just how the heck it is made to begin with. I think one of my favorite aspects of Yuasa’s work is just how sincere almost his entire output is, and how you can really feel a certain kind of emotion and vision behind each work that is unique to it. For Eizouken it is definitely the joy of creation and what it means to pursue something creative. Easily one of the best watches of 2020 for both its visuals, sound design, characters with great chemistry that have to deliver very heavy and technical dialogue but do so in a really natural and enjoyable way--and hey the shows within the show that the girls make are also usually pretty interesting and good too.

MAJOR 2nd Season 2

I think my favorite aspect of this new middle school arc of MAJOR 2nd was seeing just how much Daigo has changed over the years since we last saw him in elementary school in the first season. No longer in little league and now trying to save his school’s baseball club, Daigo has grown into a strong leader and really feels natural with everyone he talks to. It’s a huge departure from the bullied and reclusive selfish kid he was in the first season. Seeing the kid grow up into somebody reliable and caring like this almost brings a tear to my eye.

It’s an old cliché but saving the falling apart club in your school is a classic underdog story and the fact that Daigo built his own team from the ground up really sells it. The team is largely made up of girls too which brings a really great girl power aspect to it as well. With just 3 boys and the rest of the positions being filled with females, the haphazard team Daigo put together not only has to show that nobodies can make it but that girls are just as good as the boys.

Rent-a-Girlfriend

I love trashy romcom harem anime, I will be the first to admit it. I am not even their target audience, in fact I am probably the exact opposite of their target audience yet I can’t get enough of this kind of garbage, and Rent-a-Girlfriend brings in the garbagest of garbage it can! The name says it all right there, our hero is literally so pathetic he has to pay girls money to go on dates with him. And he just continues to ruin everything around him with his constant lying and all around patheticness. He is like a blackhole of suck that will drag down any and all that go near him. What more can you even want?!

I am half facetious here of course, but to an extent what I said about Kazuya isn’t wrong. He’s the biggest loser around, and I love him. It’s fun to watch him squirm, and it’s nice to learn more about him and see he has a good side deep down too. In a lot of ways he’s probably one of the more relatable leads in these kinds of shows as he’s just as pathetic as all the rest of us who watch these kinds of shows are. But besides Kazuya there are plenty of nice leading ladies too and probably most surprisingly a fairly well fleshed out circle of friends that he hangs out with. Usually these kinds of shows will sideline the male friends of the leads and only focus on time between the lead and the girls, so it’s refreshing to see so much time spent with other boys in the show too.

Also as an addendum to anyone who watches the series dubbed, Aleks Le‘s performance as the lead role is maybe some of the best casting in modern anime dubbing I have ever heard. He kills it in this show. It’s a performance that carries the entire show.

Shadowverse

You might say, I saved the best for last, but honestly this was a coincidence. Shadowverse is a by-the-numbers card game anime. It starts very slow and very bland, and offers nothing new to the genre instead sticking entirely to the classic tropes and clichés of sports anime and Yu-Gi-Oh clones alike. That is for the first 12 episodes or so. It begins to evolve and gets a little more interesting from there, then something happens. Something I cannot explain. Something that makes no sense. Something that the production committee probably should not have allowed to occur. The show just goes absolutely, positively, certifiably, fucking insane.

Out of nowhere, the plot suddenly turns into a straight Neon Genesis Evangelion knock-off, complete with plugsuits, random nonsense mysticism from exotic religions, and soul crushing nightmarishly harsh treatment of the child protagonists. Suddenly time freezes for everyone but the main characters, and the totally original not Kabbalah, Tree of Woe, begins to end the world. Now armed with their new psychic powers (that they just have now out of nowhere!) the kids have to fight brain washed former enemies and loved ones alike that seek to destroy the world via assimilation into the darkness.

Suddenly we have moments like the above where Luca, the coldhearted and cool Shadowverse player who only ever began fighting in tournaments to earn money for his younger sick sister’s treatment has to face off against a possessed evil version of his sister who bemoans all the isolation he put her through, never being there with her, always away trying to earn money. She berates and destroys the young man’s heart for his well intentions. Luca with no other options has to put her down for the good of the world.

You know, for the 12 year old kids in the audience that signed up for a show about a cellphone app.

I haven't even gotten to the best part yet, the show isn’t over! There’s still 12 episodes left in the series and do you wanna know the best part?! The heroes already failed! The world blew up and everyone got sucked into a blackhole and died! That’s not a joke. The bad guys won. And there’s still another season worth of episodes to go! I am not kidding, this is how the show ended the year 2020! This is legendary, no fucks given status if I ever saw it. The best way to end 2020 if ever there was one:

Every week I anxiously log on to watch Shadowverse after it jumped the shark just to see what insanity happens next. This is Tommy Wiseau The Room energy levels of pure insane dribble. Shadowverse might be the biggest disaster of a card game anime of all time, and I simply cannot get enough of it now.

BONUS THOUGHTS For 2020

Random Anime Collecting: This year saw Discotek release three Case Closed/Detective Conan movies on blu-ray. Detective Conan is a series near and dear to my heart, and one I spent a lot of my college days obsessed over. This is a franchise I really went to great lengths to collect after Funimation reprinted many of the long time out of print volumes of the series back in 2013, and I bought them all back then. Buying new Detective Conan movies in 2020 felt super surreal, and also wonderful. I really hope I can keep buying more in 2021.

Hidive for these hard times: I didn’t include anything really from Sentai, I am not sure why, maybe none of what I watched this year would count as a favorite of mine, maybe I was just lazy and didn’t want to add to my list anymore. Honestly though I watched a lot of series this year on Hidive. I think my favorite has been the new dub of Pet Girl of Sakurasou.

A Lost Classic: Nobody is talking about God Mazinger finally getting released in English from Discotek and that kind of bums me out. The series was one I obsessed over when younger, especially because it was rare to find even raw footage of it lead alone subtitled. It was never subtitled in fact, so Discotek’s release is the first time it has ever been in English.

#anime #The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?#Ascendance of a Bookworm #Black Clover #Boruto #Boruto Naruto Next Generations #Bofuri #Cardfight!! Vanguard #Dragon Quest #Dragon Quest Dai no Daibouken #dragon quest the adventure of dai #Gundam Build Divers Re:rise #JuJutsu Kaisen #Keep YOur Hands Off Eizouken #MAJOR 2nd #Rent-a-girlfriend #Shadowverse

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hamliet · 4 years

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Hello! Have you seen TROS yet? [Spoiler alert] I was really devastated by the ending - coming out the theater feeling upset and disappointed. Do you have any thoughts on it? Or maybe any plan to write fix-it fic? Thank you!

I am seeing it tomorrow. That said, I’ve read the plot summary, and no good execution can save that. So I was planning on posting this after I watched it with amendments made as I hope to enjoy it, but I’ll just post it now and amend this as necessary based on the film as I see it. (I still believe I will enjoy the film, even if I don’t think it’s a good film. I do think that. I really do... I hope.)

BASED ON THE PLOT SUMMARIES ALONE (grains of salt everywhere!):

I think it’s technically… messy writing at best and downright bad writing in other parts.* 10/10 it’s a blockuster-y, JJ Abrams-esque, (hopefully) fun, messy narrative movie that will be forgotten in 0.3 seconds.

Disclaimer before everyone comes after me: if you like it, AWESOME. If you think it’s good writing, great! Good writing and bad writing are inherently subjective; that said, there are general consensuses among literary studies about what constitutes bad and good writing. Hence, I’m relying on those consensuses when I call it messily written.

Before we get into specifics, I’ll compare it to two other major pop culture endings: Game of Thrones and Avengers: Endgame.

TROS is similar to the GoT final season in that it attempts to incorporate every aspect of fan speculation ever. However, it’s more like Endgame in that it is still somewhat true to the themes and characters—but unfortunately also like Endgame, it is not transformative or particularly interesting as a story on its own. In fact, it’s rather boring and honestly… bad storytelling. It tries to rehash Return of the Jedi but it doesn’t succeed in any way because the world and the overall story has grown since the early 1980s, and so the same story doesn’t work anymore.

Showing a cyclical story remaining cyclical with no sign of that breaking–instead, the cycles are even reinforced–does not give optimism nor does it give hope.

Redemption=death needs to die already. If we really want to reach people and tell them that the message is that you can always make a better choice (as Daisy Ridley and JJ Abrams have said about Kylo’s arc), maybe don’t send the message in each and every story that you have to die to redeem yourself. Look outside of cultural secular Calvinism, for the love of God and the betterment of the world and stories as a whole.

Now let’s talk Rey’s parentage.

We know Rey Palpatine wasn’t planned from the beginning (Trevorrow, the original write/director of IX, who was thankfully fired, said that he never planned for Palpatine to return), which means Rey’s parentage was most likely retconned from TLJ and there was no real plan for the sequel trilogy’s overall character arcs (save for Kylo’s, according to the actors and writers).

Listen to me. You don’t have to have everything planned when you start a three-film saga, but you gotta know the major beats.

This is like a sad game of movie telephone.

Yes, I know the OT Star Wars didn’t have a plan either and it’s like one of the only examples I can think of where no plan worked out–albeit not without hiccups (Leia kissing Luke, anyone?) If you expect lightning to strike twice in the same place, I’m sorry, but you are hopelessly naive.

Having Rey decide she wants to carry on the name Skywalker at the end is lame as shit. It’s a way to appease fans while being like nah she still isn’t related. Trying to please every fan is a sure way to guarantee that you will please no one. It might make for a perfectly pleasant film experience (I really hope it does), but not good, lasting storytelling (though not like, horrific either). It’s meh. It’s like… giving someone who is starving oatmeal. It will get the job done but will it satisfy and enthrall people? Not quite.

And let’s switch gears for a minute to Finn and Rose, my first and third favorite characters in this trilogy (Kylo is second, Rey is fourth). The sidelining of Rose is nothing short of a terrible attempt to please the white-supremacist-aligned Fandom Menace. Let’s not pretend it’s anything else. JJ’s lipservice about how wonderful it was that Kelly was cast at SW Celebration is, in hindsight, absolutely nauseating.

Shame on JJ. Shame on Disney.

But the main problem I have with this film is this:

Why did it need to exist?

The answer is money. Obviously. I know, I know stories exist to make money. That doesn’t mean I can’t criticize the fact that the story was sacrificed on the unholy altar of capitalism and Disney’s desire to own our souls. (Disney–the reason I like your movies is that a lot of them are good stories. I’m not interested in pandering soooooo.)

The Rise of Skywalker does not enhance the Star Wars narrative. Nothing about this film satisfies the Skywalker Saga nor the sequel trilogy, and it kind of all comes down to Kylo Ren’s death being the nail that sunk the entire world of Star Wars.

Keep in mind Kylo is not my favorite character when I’m saying this. Finn is. But I never spoke about Finn as much because the story didn’t utilize him properly. I never had concerns about Finn getting a happy ending while I was worried for Rey and Kylo’s arcs. (Finn’s arc, however, did have a ton more potential than was capitalized on; in particular, he would have been better if he was more conflicted over say, shooting other stormtroopers. His whole character humanized the usual red shirts, which when paired with Rose’s everywoman character, had so much potential I could shriek about it all day. That he didn’t lead other brainwashed stormtroopers into rebellion and freedom saddens me. Also, his ending again seems to bring about a good victim/bad victim dichotomy when it is compared with Kylo’s. The reason these two are my faves is that they were brainwashed as kids which, well, I can kinda sorta heavily relate to.)

Kylo Ren and Rey’s relationship doesn’t really get much better than it did in The Last Jedi. It actually rehashes that arc significantly. We already knew Kylo would fight for Rey and the galaxy, so… how was this different? Now, if he had lived, it would have been different, because it was the after the fight that proved that Kylo wasn’t ready to redeem himself in The Last Jedi. It was Kylo’s choice to stay at the expense of Rey and the Resistance that was literally the set up for conflict in the next film. This… turned it into nothing? Their conflict is rehashed and then whoo-hoo! Easy way out! Kill him so that they don’t have to deal with the “after” this time! They never have to deal with the conflict literally set up in The Last Jedi.

That’s bad writing, fam.

Life is infinitely more interesting. Leaving the story open with a living Skywalker instead of killing literally everyone involved with the Skywalkers except Rey who now adopts that name is… so unsatisfying I can’t even. Even if later material shows him showing up as a Force Ghost, like: cool saw that with Vader so this… adds nothing to the existing films. It doesn’t really reconcile anything.

It also… does not help the Rey=Mary Sue argument. She is NOT a Mary Sue, and that is a sexist term itself, but in no way is it a satisfying ending to her arc, because it isn’t a well-written ending which means it isn’t a well-written arc. The problem with Rey’s ending is a mirror of my problem with Kylo’s ending: it’s the very much a combination of her ending in The Last Jedi and her life before The Force Awakens.

She and Kylo are now separated (permanently this time).

She’s has her Resistance friends.

She’s alone on a desert planet.

But wait! Now she’s now happy!

Uh, why? The only reason I can think of is that the narrative demands it. Because honestly, what changes? The family she chose–the Skywalkers–are just as dead as her Palpatine birth family, soooooo. I suppose she reconciled with her heritage and come to peace with it and so that’s why she’s happy now, but… I can’t lie. It’s not hopeful. It’s not optimistic. It’s not Star Wars and it isn’t consistent for the message (especially if this is supposed to be the ending to the saga!) to be both:

life sucks for the Skywalkers and then they die–seriously, look at Shmi, Anakin, Padmé, Leia, Luke, Han, Kylo–it is LITERALLY ALL OF THEM; and

deciding to be a Skywalker means you’re at peace.

I can only assume Rey’s life will suck and then she’ll die, tbh, unless of course she is better off because of her blood… which negates the point of her being a Skywalker and is a really gross idea.

YOU CAN’T HAVE BOTH IN YOUR ENDING. PICK ONE.

Rejecting the Skywalkers would be anti-Star Wars, for sure, but marrying into them as a way of bridging the unfinished pain between Anakin and Padmé and Leia and her father? Much better. Or just leave it open. Honestly, leave it open for Kylo and Rey to both be alive and see each other again.

But you’re just upset your ship didn’t get a happy ending!

No, I’m upset about the storytelling, of which shipping is a part. A canonical part just as much as the lightsaber fights are. Anakin and Padmé. Leia and Han. Finn and Rose. Poe and Zorii. Rey and Ben.

The Force created Anakin, remember? All films–even the spin-offs–encourage our heroes to trust the force. “May the force be with us.” But the Force created an ENTIRE FAMILY THAT LIVED LIVES THAT SUCKED AND MADE LIFE SUCK FOR EVERYONE AROUND THEM AND THEN THEY DIED.

May the Force stay far the f*ck away from me, amen.

But seriously I can’t trust the world of a galaxy far far away or its narrative anymore. It’s a contradiction that causes all nine films to unravel. Why?

Again, let’s return to my earlier GoT comparison, because there is one thing TROS does that is more similar to GoT than to Endgame: Endgame drew together a bunch of unique distinctly separate stories into a crossover. TROS, just like GoT, relied on cliffhanger, incomplete endings to its films and therefore the ending matters a hell of a lot more than a stand-alone story.

I’m not dying to rewatch it like I am with stories where I realize I might learn more the second time. And by “rewatch it” I mean the entire nine-film saga. Knowing that canonically Leia, Luke, Han–they all die and their last descendent dies, the last descendent of Padmé and Anakin–for me, it’s personally gonna be hard to watch again. It’s gonna be hard to watch TROS going into it the first time.

And so the saga of bad endings continues.

Game of Thrones remains the worst at a -100 out of 10. It’s followed by Tokyo Ghoul:re which is still 2/10, and Star Wars is, on paper (meaning after I see it I am hoping it rises a few notches) now… 4/10. Endgame is a solid 6.5/10.

Banana Fish, sweetie, I’m sorry you were ranked down there. Your ending is a 7/10 but the rest of your story is like, 10/10 so you are sprung from this list.

Help me, Shingeki no Kyojin. You’re my only hope.

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kuronekonerochan · 4 years

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Pillow Book initial thoughts (Spoilers...but super confusing if you didn’t read the novel)

People are disappointed that she's a fox and his pet and there's no pining romance like they used to be in TMOPB...and then there’s me, having read the book...you complain she's a fox...oh boy wait until she's a handkerchief.

But tbf this whole kind of start from scratch and mess with their story timeline in TMOPB (as shown by Ah Li's presence), making the two dramas logically incompatible instead of intertwined stories has to be the weirdest, dumbest take they could have gone with. This drama was one that would actually benefit a lot from those long winded cdrama introductory set ups.

TMOPB the drama had linear story telling and it worked, but the novel started with BQ meeting YH and AL post amnesia. This drama should have started with a recap of the middle of their (adapted to TMOPB drama) story, with FJ as queen at the end of TMOPB, and only then going all the way back to the beginning of the whole story, like they actually chose to do in this drama, leading up to the moments shown in their scenes of TMOPB in quick recaps (since technically it's different lives it can work), to all the despair of them not having destiny, FJ's other mortal life, etc... And then...right about the middle of this drama’s runtime, when they are at their most desperate, catching up to the end of TMOPB, our PB set up scene and our end of flashback storytelling midpoint of the drama, then, wiggle in the (now re)encounter by the lake with alterations from the book since TMOPB happened, the handkerchief, Aranya's dream sequence and the spark that reignites the hope of them having destiny...and everything that follows.

It might seem weird what I’m trying to say, I mean how could they possibly skip over major scenes relevant to the lead couple’s story just because they were already shown in TMOPB? How could this drama stand on it’s own then, for people who have never watched TMOPB? It would have to be done with care, ofc, but precisely because it is Pillow Book and this world we are talking about, it would work, although it couldn’t be done on any regular dramas. The whole premise and world of the dramas is based around bored and stubborn Gods who do things at a whim and for whom the concept of time is veeeeeeery fluid. (As the Doctor says “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.”) The time in the novels is only relevant if anything of importance to the characters is happening...For example FJ has about 20 days to make a sword (even immortals have deadlines, lol), so those days all count. On the other hand BQ was so depressed after she lost YH that she literally slept for 3 years. 300 years go by like it’s nothing or are very important, according to the circumstance (ppl who read the book know what I mean), even 70.000 years...Lifetimes in the mortal realm are about a month in the Heaven Kingdom according to TMOPB and the gods wake up from it like they have just gone to sleep and resume their affairs on the immortal realm. So in this setting, jumping over the events of TMOPB with only quick flashbacks and have the characters jump right back in business onto the Pillow Book story is very much in line with the logic of this world and wouldn’t feel weird, jarring or rushed...unlike their decision of ignoring TMOPB and treating it like 2 different stories, AU takes on the same lore, with the same cast, but different events and timelines, which is much more confusing.

I was talking about all of this with @dangermousie and we both agree that the smashing hit that was Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms and Dong Hua/Feng Jiu’s angsty romantic storyline in it was what made most people so eager for Pillow Book with the same cast, and not really an interest in the Pillow Book plot itself (this coming from someone who read it and loved the story). I don’t think there was a hardcore Pillow Book novel fanbase who wanted it to be exactly like the book, so this decision of having it be closer to the source material and removed from the storyline from TMOPB, instead of making it a spin off/sequel...to the point that they made it so incompatible you can’t think of the two as happening in the same narrative, well it’s just baffling to me.

Long story short, I’m liking it so far, but I can’t help but feeling disappointed at the wasted opportunity of continuing their story from TMOPB, bc actually a blend of the two would be perfect for me. TMOPB showed this couple at their most tragic and angsty...PB is on the whole lighter and fluffier. even with Aranya’s dream. Mostly, combining the two would be the best way to go about giving Dong Hua a compelling character arc. In TMOPB he’s a tragic man, accepting that he isn’t destined to be with the one he loves as a sacrifice. In Pillow Book he’s arrogant and doesn’t care so he goes for it. If they had tied the two stories together, we could’ve had the hopelessness of TMOPB because he thought there was no chance, but as the story caught up to the events of the PB novel and he learned that, bc of Aranya’s dream, he already had a chance without knowing it, then we could see stubborn DH chasing his love.

#pillow book #3 lives 3 worlds the pillow book #ten miles of peach blossoms #the eternal love #eternal love dream #eternal love #cdrama #cdrama edit #vengo gao #dilraba dilmurat

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higuchimon · 4 years

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[fanfic] In Unforgotten Arms

Ryou did not let himself relax. He hadn’t let himself relax in well over a year, perhaps close to two. How could he, when he’d lost two of his best friends? It wasn’t as if he were close to that many people. When one was as talented as he was, people had a tendency more to admire one than to want to be friends. Fubuki had been an exception. So had Yuusuke and Asuka. Juudai seemed to be one as well, though Ryou wasn’t entirely sure about that.

What he did know for certain was that his time at this school was almost at an end, and he would leave them all behind. Fubuki still needed to finish his education here. Asuka, Shou, and Juudai would all remain here for a while.

And he would go on to the Pro Leagues. He hadn’t yet signed his first contract but he wouldn’t legally be allowed until he was eighteen. There were only a handful of pro duelists under eighteen and there were certain qualifications for those – usually being emancipated or not having parents for one reason or another. Some of those were the best of the best, because they needed to be. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t remain in the Pros for very long.

He wouldn’t be able to relax once he was there, either. Not very often, at least. After victories, but other than that? Not very likely. He might have brief intervals but for the most part, this was the beginning of his adult life.

Familiar fingers rested against the back of his neck. He didn’t move at all as Fubuki began to gently massage his shoulders and neck.

“How long has it been since you had someone do this?” Fubuki asked. “Because you are so knotted up back here.”

Ryou wanted to stay as rigid as he could. He’d gotten so used to being rigid that he wasn’t certain if he knew how to being anything else. But Fubuki’s fingers knew their way around his tight muscles better than anyone else.

“Not since you vanished. Remember that night?” Ryou managed to get the words out, even though all he really wanted right now was just to close his eyes and melt into that gentle touch.

Fubuki nodded, and while Ryou couldn’t see him, he could feel the warmth of his oldest friend’s smile. That had been a good night. He and Fubuki studied together, preparing for one of the more important tests. The evening had only been tainted by the recent disappearance of Yuusuke.

Everything about that time frame disturbed Ryou even now. Fubuki hadn’t mentioned anything about Yuusuke since he’d recovered himself. Ryou wanted to ask – wanted to see if Fubuki knew anything at all about what happened. But the few light queries he’d managed to insert into conversations told him Fubuki either knew nothing or just didn’t remember.

But one thing Fubuki hadn’t forgotten was just where all of Ryou’s tensions congregated and now his warm fingers pressed and massaged and worked out all of those hard knots. Ryou wanted to remain a little tense. But he relaxed regardless.

“If you’re this tense, I’m going to have to start visiting you on the weekends,” Fubuki observed, kneading over and over. “The Pros aren’t going to be easy on you.”

Ryou made a sort of noise. He couldn’t have said what the noise meant, only that it came out of his throat. If he’d been pressed to identify it, then he would have considered something to the effect of mild agreement. Whatever it was, Fubuki chuckled in answer.

That got actual words out of Ryou. “It shouldn’t be that bad.” He couldn’t remember when he’d lost a duel. Technically he’d lost to Camula but he’d long since decided not to count that one. She hadn’t played fair. When he and his opponent respected one another, his undefeated streak stretched back to his childhood.

Fubuki patted him on the shoulder. “I believe in you. You’re going to blow them all away.”

It wasn’t the first time Fubuki had ever told him something like that. But it was the first time in a very long time and Ryou savored the words as much as he savored the salt taste of the ocean on his lips and tongue and the wafting of the wind against his ears. Being here under the lighthouse almost made him think this was once again their first year and their lives lay before them instead of behind them.

“Thanks for keeping an eye on Asuka all this time,” Fubuki said. He hadn’t stopped his careful massaging, even as Ryou relaxed into a warm puddle of pleased goo.

“Now it’s your turn,” Ryou replied, his eyes closed so he could better focus on what he couldn’t see. Then his lips twitched. “Though I think it’s more likely that she’s going to watch out for you.”

He could all but feel Fubuki’s befuddled blink, before the other laughed. “Are you sure about that?”

“Yes. She’s stronger than you think.” Ryou wished he had the words to truly explain Asuka to Fubuki. She’d grown up so much during the time he’d been away. If he didn’t learn to adjust, to see her as the strong person that she was now, then Ryou foresaw a lot of pain in his future. He thought he’d almost miss seeing that. He dearly cared about Fubuki, but oh, did he have a lot to learn.

Fubuki made a noncommittal noise of his own before he kept up the work on Ryou’s neck and shoulders, hands moving down Ryou’s arms to his wrists and then back up. Then he murmured a question that Ryou hadn’t heard in two years.

“Did you want me to -”

He didn’t need to finish it. Ryou knew exactly what he meant. He nodded quietly. Fubuki carefully adjusted his position and his arms slid around Ryou to rest around his waist. Ryou leaned back against him, growing more and more aware of Fubuki’s presence. Fubuki rested his head on Ryou’s, embracing Ryou as much as he could. Ryou was really a little taller than Fubuki but when they locked together like this, it didn’t matter.

He doubted that he’d ever find anyone else he trusted this much to do this with him. But he wasn’t really looking for someone either.

Fubuki’s embrace warmed a part of him that Ryou hadn’t even realized was cold until now. He relaxed into it, the sound of the waves crashing on the shore wiping out all of the tiny irritants that had built up over the last two years. He’d all but forgotten how good it felt to be held like this.

He knew that they would have to return to Obelisk Blue sooner or later. He’d caught a rumor on the wind about Professor Chronos having some kind of special duel today but he wasn’t certain of who it would be against. If Fubuki hadn’t wanted to come down here and relax together, he might have been there watching. It was always fascinating to see the Professor duel, especially when the stakes weren’t all that high.

At the least he could watch the duel on his PDA. He would have to turn it in before he left, so he might as well enjoy something good before then. Almost all of his thoughts ended up turning back to the fact he’d be leaving here for good all too soon. He suspected he wasn’t the only senior student having to deal with that. Nor was he the first or the last.

I wonder if I’ll be able to make it back to see Shou’s graduation. He had already seen signs of his brother’s growing maturity and skill, and it wasn’t impossible that Shou could stand where he did one day, with the highest scores available so he would be able to choose who he dueled in the graduation duel. That he would love to see.

He knew he would have to make his own decision very soon. Though there wasn’t much of a decision to make. There was only one person he wanted to duel one more time. Once he’d thought to choose either Fubuki or Yuusuke. He’d never thought anyone else at Duel Academia could come close to his skill. He’d never been so happy to be wrong.

Being wrong tended to have bad consequences. He still didn’t have the full story of what happened to Fubuki – there had to be more to it. Neither of them knew what happened to Yuusuke or all of the others who’d vanished back then. So he’d learned early on at Duel Academia that only through perfection could he be safe.

Here in Fubuki’s warm embrace, he found another form of safety. He didn’t have to think about anything if he didn’t want to. Here he let his mind wash away on the sound of the waves and the feel of his best friend’s comforting arms.

Notes: Neither of them have the words to describe it at this point in their lives, but I headcanon Fubuki as pansexual/panromantic and Ryou as asexual, with his romance options being somewhere between biromantic and homoromantic. He prefers a good cuddle session with someone he trusts to intercourse of any kind. At this point, those people include Fubuki, Asuka, and Yuusuke, with Edo to join the list later. One day I may write something that's a sequel to this but during the Hell Kaiser arc and/or Ryou and Yuusuke. Maybe Fubuki convincing Ryou to come help in season three.

#fanfic #higuchimon writes #ygo gx #marufuji ryou #tenjoin fubuki

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venus-says · 5 years

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Round of Randoms #1 - Shorties

The one with the skeleton, the cat boys, and the card game.

Look who's back!

After a much-needed break to cool off from the Aikatsu marathon, here I again to delight the world with my unnecessary opinions. XD

You may be asking yourself, what is this? Well, I was thinking of what to do to come back to the blog, but still on my break mindset and I didn't want to get back to my regular stuff. So I thought about it and decided to get back to my roots and one of the reasons why I created this blog in the first place and went down on my anime list and see what was there that I could watch and bring to here. I've made a huge list of things, divided them into categories, and I'm planning to watch them in between the regular shows I comment here. I was lazy and pretty much only picked stuff that came out this year, but is still a somewhat diverse range of the usual things I talk about here.

Since I wanted something quick and easy to do at first I went with my "shorties" category that is composed of shows with a run time of 15 minutes or less per episode, and "one-shot" OVAs, in other words, things that I could watch on a single day with not much trouble. These are "reviews" of the entire season so they won't be as detailed, but that was never the point of these to begin with, If there's a show on my list that I have a lot to talk about I'll probably do it on a separate post.

Anyway, let's begin.

MYSTERIA Friends

Starting off is MYSTERIA Friends (or Manaria Friends in the original). This wasn't a show that was on my list actually, but once I saw that it was only 10 episodes of 15 minutes each and that both Yoko and Nana were voicing characters on this show I was "okay, I need to watch this now". I had no previous knowledge of anything related to this show and I was kinda excited to see what it was about, I don't know what I was expecting from it, but in reality, I got really disappointed.

Like, the show technically is gorgeous, I think that because of the shorter airing time they could pay more attention to the drawing and animation and you get stunned by the visuals. The soundtrack is also pretty decent, there's nothing exceptional aside of maybe the insert song Nana's character sings in one the episodes, but the general background music is pretty effective on putting yourself on that world.

With that being said, this is probably where the positives end. The show has no plot, which in itself it's not a problem, most of this short shows are episodic anyway and that's one of the charms of this type of anime, but in this case it's a problem because it just seems empty, the show seems to be trying to talk about inter-species relationships, but it actually never touches on that what gives this "empty media" vibe. This ties in with another problem that is the fact that this fantastic, magical setting has no purpose of being there other than aesthetics, I feel that the excuse of going "magic medieval" was we gonna show how this human and this half-demon can get along and bring peace and harmony to this world, but they never touch on the topic and it becomes pretty obvious that they only went with that route because the author has a thing for girl dragons.

Which ties in with my biggest problem, the useless ecchi. Honestly, the amount of ecchi they got to put in such a short amount of time is unbelievable, like, right on the second episode Grea is pain because she's molting, but the scene is shot as like she's having sex and the moans are more like pleasure moans rather than moans of someone who's in pain, and is just so uncomfortable, and to add more into this weirdness Anne steals the shed skin of Grea's tail and in the final episode she's smelling that like those pervs smelling on panties and IT'S SO AWKWARD. This threw me off so much, I think I only got through because the show was very short and I know the suffering would be very low, otherwise I would definitely have dropped it right on episode 2.

Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san

Honda-san was that show that I had always seen people commenting on and was very interested in watching since the beginning, but I never did because I'm lazy, so when I decided to do this I knew I had to put the show on the list and finally watch it, and that's a decision I definitely don't regret making.

Honestly, this show is so good. It's not that comedy that will let you laughing your pants off, but it doesn't mean that it ain't funny. It's mentioned in the show that the manga that originated from this anime was written by Honda-san himself about his experiences working on a bookstore, I don't know how truthful the stories are, but is this sense of "damn this really happens irl" that makes everything way much funnier and it is a true joy to watch. The anime isn't ambitious, I don't think it's trying to convey a message or make a commentary or anything, but this doesn't come as a detriment for the show, this anime didn't need any of that and they don't try to make it be about something big. It's just a wholesome show about life that is really comforting, especially if you're an adult that already had some experience with retailing.

What else do I have to say? I love the style, I love the soundtrack, I love the weird situation that happens, and the characters are just amazing, aside of Honda-san I love manager Armor she's lots of fun, and Chief Pestmask (who's VA is, look at that, Hikasa Yoko once again) who doesn't appear a lot, but when she comes she sure leaves an impression on you. This show did crush my fantasies of working on a bookstore someday, but I loved every second of it anyway. XD

Hey, Your Cat Ears Are Showing! Season 2

So when I heard Hora Mimi was getting a second season, I was both excited and apprehensive. This one of the rare short shows that have an episodic narrative but that has an overall plot to the whole thing, and I was quite satisfied with the ending of season 1, it was sweet and heartwarming as the rest of the series was and I really didn't think a second season was needed, thus I really didn't watch it while it was airing. But this was the perfect opportunity for me to finally watch it.

And this season was a very good surprise, it expanded on what the first season had built and it became three times gayer by giving Dong Dong and Jin Zhu partners, Jin Zhu partner being an Ear People but from another species, which made this season even more fun and cute. The final arc of this season where they established that Da Shu and Miao had met each other before the events of season 1 is probably the only thing I don't like about this sequel because on my eyes it looks silly, but I wouldn't call it a negative that renders the show. Hora Mimi remains a very adorable, heartwarming show that everyone definitely should check it out.

The Girl From the Other Side

Totsukuni no Shoujo was never on my radar for mangas so I wasn't aware of its existence. A few months back I saw someone reblogging gifs from this OVA on my dash and I got really intrigued by it, the aesthetic was kinda similar to Ancient Magus Bridge but it was darker and it had this antique style to it that made me fall in love instantly.

Since I don't know the manga, I'm not familiar with the characters and their stories, but even though I was in the dark I could grasp the concept without major difficulties because the characters are very expressive, and the music is very well used on passing to was what is going on with those characters. I thought an anime with no dialogue would be boring, but this OVA was very captivating, not just by its visuals but also by the narrative and the music that got me hooked from beginning to end. I feel like this is a very shallow review of the thing, but I don't think I'm smart enough to elaborate more on what to say about this show.

I'm not familiar with the manga and I don't know how things work there, neither I know if such style could hold up for an entire season, but I definitely wanna see more, and I'll definitely look up the manga if I can make my tablet work again someday.

Zenonzard THE ANIMATION - Episode 0

And to wrap up we have Zenonzard, which was another show that I wasn't aware of until I decided to do this thing and it's only here because the poster looked cool, and it was officially available on youtube with subs and no region locks so I thought, "why not?"

This is probably the weirdest of the bunch since it's a show based on a card game, and I haven't watched one of these in ages, and it's weird, but I was kinda into it? Like, I don't like that most of the girls in this show have ginormous breasts and this thing of a female coming to an apparently normal boy saying "I choose you" seems that it's going to backfire and will create a huge mess in the future, but as the episode was progressing I was getting more and more into it?

The plot doesn't seem as good, if they even have a plot. It does a crap job at explaining what this game is and how it works, and also the CG used for the monsters is horrendous. But it got me interested, it had some great music playing and I think this is what caught me the most, even though there's one song, that I believe is sung by Nanase who did voices for Aikatsu, that I feel like it was very misplaced. I also like the futuristic aesthetic, I'm a sucker for these things and I was pleased for the most part of it.

I don't know if this will become a thing, but if they actually release an anime and if they publish it on youtube like what they've done with this ONA/Special/Prequel? I may keep watching it. Which comes to as a surprise to me.

And this was the first Round of Randoms (provisory name) of this blog. I quite enjoyed doing this thing, I think I'm gonna keep doing it to always have something different and new around here. What did you think of it? Have you watched any of these shows? What are your opinions about it? Is there any show you have to recommend? And what's a good name for this new thing I'm trying to do? Thank you so much for sticking with me until the end, and I'll see you guys at another time.

#MYSTERIA Friends #Manaria Friends #Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san #Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san #Hora Mimi ga Mieteru yo #Totsukuni no Shoujo #The Girl From the Other Side #Zenonzard #Round of Randoms #others

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cromulentbookreview · 4 years

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Puntastic!

“The first thing you should know about me, the truest most important thing, is that I ain’t never really had friends” - Jane McKeene

Because this blog is for cromulent book reviews rather than reviews of standalones or first books of a series, I’m going to keep on going with my streak of reviewing sequels. I’m sure nobody has a problem with it, as nobody reads this blog.

And by that, I mean: Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland!

I absolutely love Westerns. I was raised on Westerns. And, living in the Pacific Northwest, basically all of the history of where I live is a combination of a Western and the Oregon Trail game.

(Fun fact: as a wee little beeb growing up in rural Oregon back in the Days of Yore ((you know, the 90s)), we played Oregon Trail on ancient DOS computers. Oh man the day when you could snag one of the color computers, instead of just the black-and-green ones…God, I’m old.)

Anyway, Westerns! I love them.

Westerns, yay!

I also like stories with zombies.

Zombies, yay!

And when you combine them in a story starring two badass young women of color, you get Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation! I loved Dread Nation, because, like I said, its a Western with zombies starring two badass young women who can (and will!) kick ass and take names. Dread Nation came out in 2018, which somehow feels like it was both forever ago and just yesterday. I don’t know, time means nothing these days, and it means even less when you’re sleep-deprived. Still, Dread Nation is one of many books I’ve kept on my radar because the moment I was done, I needed a sequel sometime yesterday. And the moment Deathless Divide hit Edelweiss, I hit that request button so fast - well, I mean, I clicked with normal speed, then had to wait for my crappy rural internet to kick in, but I got there eventually.

The horror...

Just one more fun story then I’ll get to the review, I promise! I got a physical ARC of Deathless Divide because I won a pun contest Justina Ireland held on Twitter. Special thanks to my sister, who knows all the best puns and introduced me to the concept of Caribbean Pie Rates. I’m generally more of a loser rather than a winner, so winning a pun contest on Twitter was the highlight of my 2019.

Ok - Deathless Divide!

We begin exactly where Dread Nation left off - Jane and Katherine (NOT Kate, only Jane is allowed to call her Kate) have barely escaped the shit-show town of Summerland, Kansas with their lives. Now, along with Jane’s kind-of-sort-of boyfriend, Jackson and a ragtag band of survivors, they make for the nearby town of Nicodemus, which promises some sort of safety from the coming zombie shambler hoard.

Only, in a world full of zombies shamblers, there is no such thing as safety.

Things go quickly from bad to tragic on the way to Nicodemus, and our two favorite zombie shambler harvesters barely make it there either. Nicodemus promises some semblance of safety: the walls are well-fortified, and the town seems far more welcoming to black people than Summerland, and there are even a few of Jane and Katherine’s classmates from Miss Preston’s School of Combat. There is one major problem, though: it’s still Kansas, and the dead are still coming.

Heh. That would happen in Kansas. Beautiful, scenic Kansas.

Once in Nicodemus, Jane is arrested, as word of her more lethal shenanigans in Summerland has gotten there already. Also there already are a few others who also managed to escape the ill-fated hellhole that was Summerland, like Daniel Redfern, who has somehow wrangled himself a position as Sheriff, and Gideon Carr, the infuriatingly gorgeous mad scientist tinkering with a vaccine against the dead. Gideon wants to test his vaccine on the entire town, and he wants Jane to help him convince people that the experiment is safe. Jane, stuck in the town prison, just wants everyone to get the hell out of Nicodemus as soon as possible because there is a massive hoard of the dead coming and there’s no walls or vaccines or anything that will save them except getting the hell out.

Running is their best option for survival.

But the zombies shamblers aren’t the only threat to humanity’s survival. There’s also pure, human stupidity to contend with. The people of Nicodemus are convinced their walls will hold. They’re convinced Gideon’s bullshit vaccine will protect them.

It does not go well.

For those of you who have, like me, been waiting longingly for a sequel to Dread Nation, you will not be disappointed - Deathless Divide is every bit as exciting, thought provoking and heartbreaking as its predecessor. The best part about this book is that, while Dread Nation was narrated entirely by Jane, Deathless Divide alternates between Jane’s POV and Katherine’s. It’s awesome to finally see things from Katherine’s perspective - in Dread Nation we only ever see her through Jane’s eyes, and in Deathless Divide we get to know her a lot better, including her struggles with anxiety and her feelings about her close but sometimes fraught relationship with Jane.

Deathless Divide is more than just a zombie Western (a genre I of which I absolutely need more) - it is a story of friendship, vengeance and maintaining your humanity in a world determined to strip it from you. As a sequel, Deathless Divide is exquisite- it expands on the world introduced to us in Dread Nation, provides us with a whole new perspective with Katherine's POV, and there is plenty of zombie-related action. The book may be 500 pages, but it really doesn't feel like it. You'll want to binge it all in one go, and then be left wanting more in the end. Speaking of which - I have high hopes for a third book. I've got my fingers crossed that, in the hypothetical book 3, Jane and Katherine get a chance to hang out with Bass Reeves, because I get the feeling that, in this universe, Bass Reeves is not only the badass bounty hunter he was in our universe, but also a kickass shambler harvester.

I mean, come on. The man brought in over 3,000 felons and shot and killed 14 people in self-defense. He would be a zombie-killing machine! Just look at that mustache!

Dear HBO: yes, it was awesome to see Bass Reeves featured on Watchmen (which, if you haven’t watched it yet, what are you doing, stop everything and just binge the whole thing right now).

But! I’m still waiting for my six part miniseries dedicated to the life and adventures of one of the coolest people to ever to have existed, ever.

Me, waiting for HBO’s Bass Reeves TV series:

And now for a moment in which I fall into a history-related research hole!

Late in Deathless Divide Ireland mentions the fact that, at the time, it was illegal to be a black person in Oregon. This is true. In 1844, the territory banned black people from living there altogether. And, even though the territory was made up mostly of people who disapproved of slavery, well...A guy going from Missouri to Oregon back in the late 1870s wrote about the prevailing attitude toward his fellow settlers: “Many [poor whites who migrated to Oregon from slave states] hated slavery, but a much larger number of them hated free negroes worse even than slaves.”*

Yeah, Oregon. I love my home state, but we…well, we are not very diverse. Most Oregonians are white, myself included. Only 2% of Oregonians are black, and this is because of Oregon’s long history of being shitty to people who aren’t white, which you can read all about here and here and here and here and also here. Apparently it all stems back to an incident in Oregon City back in 1844 known as the Comstock Incident, but it really, it was all just racism.

Accurate.

I was a grown-ass adult when I learned all about this section of Oregon’s history. They didn’t teach us about this when you’re growing up in rural Oregon in the 90s. No, it was all “Manifest Destiny!” and “let’s build little mini covered wagons and pull them around the school yard while dressed in bonnets and shit.” Meanwhile, the reality was that the whole state was basically a Sundown State.

Oregon, my Oregon, you crazy-ass State. I love you, but you were definitely founded as a racist utopia. That, in the alt-history of Deathless Divide the exclusion laws were never repealed is no surprise. Technically such laws were all invalidated when Oregon ratified the 14th Amendment on September 19, 1866. But Section 35, which made it illegal for black people to even move here, wasn’t repealed until 1926. Don’t think that made things easier for black people in Oregon, though! It didn’t. It really didn’t.

Damn it, Oregon. At least it’s pretty here.

RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone whose interest is piqued when they hear the phrase “zombie Western.”

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone who can’t handle badass young women killing zombies or being badass while also being protagonists of color.

RELEASE DATE: February 4, 2020

RATING: 5/5

ZOMBIE RATING:

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR POSSIBLE THIRD BOOK: Sagarmatha

* REFERENCE:

Brooks, Cheryl A (2004). "Race, Politics, and Denial: Why Oregon Forgot to Ratify the Fourteenth Amendment" (PDF). Oregon Law Review. 83: 731–762 – via University of Oregon.

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jackiestarsister · 4 years

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My thoughts on “The Rise of Skywalker”

I just saw The Rise of Skywalker with my friend @ewoking-on-sunshine. I’m still processing it, but I have many thoughts. Spoilers below the cut.

It’s not a perfect movie. But I enjoyed it and am, for the most part, satisfied. All I wanted was for it to be enjoyable and make sense and bring some resolution to the story. I think it succeeded overall.

I feel like I can’t complain too much, because the biggest things I wanted to happen did happen: we got Ben’s redemption, a freaking Reylo kiss, and Ben smiling. We even got beautiful things I wasn’t expecting, like Han’s scene, and the revelation that Leia trained as a Jedi for a time. I think it can stand on its own as a story in itself, though The Last Jedi may remain my favorite installment as far as story craft.

Here are my miscellaneous thoughts and opinions:

~ Much of it feels like fan fiction. Whether that is good or bad, I’m not sure. It could just be that the fans were particularly good at predicting possible developments and the general direction of the story.

~ Nothing was revealed about Kylo’s style/method of governing, or whether he did anything to expand the First Order’s power as Rey predicted they would do in TLJ

~ Palpatine’s return could have been set up better

~ The symbolism and significance of Kylo killing his abuser is changed, if not completely ruined, since Snoke was Palpatine’s puppet, and Kylo seems to enter Palpatine’s service after learning that he was the one who manipulated him throughout his life. Maybe Kylo thought if he refused he wouldn’t be able to get away alive?

~ Palpatine’s plans are as confusing as ever. Just how much he controlled, what he was aware of, and what his true intentions were is unclear. In particular, I’m confused about the fact that Palpatine made Snoke, who seemed ignorant of Rey’s origins and told Kylo to kill her, and the fact that Palpatine told Kylo to kill Rey when it turned out he wanted her to come and kill him. Were Snoke and/or Palpatine using reverse psychology in giving Kylo those orders?

~ Palpatine probably had the means to prolong and/or restore Padme’s life the whole time Vader was trying to find a way to do so

~ It is unclear whether Rey ever told anyone about her bond with Kylo or how he killed Snoke (which is pretty relevant information for the Resistance).

~ It’s unclear whether Rey and Kyko have seen or felt each other through the Force at all in the past year. Each movie shows several Force bond connections in a short period of time (one or two days each), and that would add up to a lot in a year, so I’m guessing they didn’t have any for that interim. It seems that although Rey closed the door, Kylo opens it. I don’t really like what that implies.

~ The beginning revealed so much and moved from one set of characters to another so quickly that I wondered whether the story was going to continue following the hero/heroine’s journey(s). Eventually it did, but it felt like the strangest beginning for a Star Wars movie, especially compared to the brilliant opening sequence of The Force Awakens.

~ Rey and Poe’s bickering was fun to watch

~ They did pretty well using those bits of Carrie Fisher footage and making Leia’s death play a role in the story. I’m sure if Fisher were still alive they would have had more justice for Leia.

~ I wish Rose had played a bigger part in the story, and that her relationships with other characters had been clarified and explored more.

~ I wish Ben had interacted with other members of the Resistance. He and Finn had so many parallels in their arcs, and the two of them actually had a couple scenes together, but they were always distant, with Finn watching as Rey interacted with Ben.

~ What was Finn going to tell Rey? What was their relationship about when it came down to it? They had such a wonderful dynamic and intertwined arcs in The Force Awakens, but in this installment it felt like they were running parallel to each other.

~ Giving Poe a shady past as a spice smuggler contradicts his canon backstory revealed in Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka.

~ Hux’s death was disappointingly anticlimactic. Seemed like a waste of his character. I’m not sure how I feel about the twist of him being the spy. He seemed so much less the crazed man who fired Starkiller or the calculating menace who considered killing an unconscious Kylo. Before TROS, Hux’s motivations seemed more political and ideological, a contrast to Kylo’s motives which seemed personal.

~ In what capacity did Pryce serve Palpatine in the previous war?

~ The fact that Rey is a Palpatine raises all kinds of questions about her family. There could be a whole trilogy about what kind of relationship Sheev and his child had. I wonder if the mother of his child was Mara Jade or someone like her who worked closely with him. But the mention of cloning and other strange techniques for making or passing on life makes me wonder if his child was even “natural” or somehow made.

~ Rey’s Dark Side heritage makes her affinity with the light side even more ironic and miraculous. Or maybe the irony is that someone as dark as Palpatine could come from such an idyllic utopia as Naboo. Maybe they are trying to show that it is our choices, not our origins, that define us.

~ The fact that Rey is descended from a powerful established character takes away from the idea that Rey represented for me and many others, that a great person can come from humble, unimportant origins.

~ Finn’s arc was opposite of predicted stormtrooper rebellion. The stormtrooper paradox still holds.

~ The hunt for Sith clues doesn’t make sense. It makes even less sense than the search for Luke in TFA, which was full of holes and unexplained coincidences.

~ The way Ben stands on the Death Star looking out at the horizon was 100% Byronic hero, but also similar to Luke’s posture when looking at the Tatooine suns.

~ Seeing Kylo talking to Han and Rey talking to Luke underscored how Kylo and Rey are co-protagonists.

~ How long did Ben stay at the Death Star ruins contemplating his and Rey’s situation? Apparently long enough for Rey to go to Ahch-To, talk to Luke, and go to Exegol, because he arrives there later than her. Time and distance in these movies have never made much sense, but I wonder if there might be some deleted scenes involving Kylo at this point. Did he realize he had lost control of the First Order? Did he ever think about ordering them not to follow Palpatine?

~ Regarding minor pilot characters: Happy to see Wedge Antilles back, sad to see Snap Wexley die.

~ Poe could have had better resolution for his arc as an emerging leader

~ Finn tries once again to sacrifice himself despite what Rose said to him after he tried to do that in TLJ. (While I don’t think it was necessary, Ben’s death was in keeping with her words because he died to save what he loved.)

~ We finally got a Reylo music theme! If I’m not mistaken, it had the Force theme sort of underlying it but there were other things going on too. I look forward to hearing the What the Force podcast’s discussion on this.

~ Rose was right that they would win by “Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.” Rey refused to even hate Palpatine. Ben came to save Rey and that enabled her to save everyone else.

~ My favorite moments of each sequel involve Rey, Ben, and a light saber passing between them.

~ Everything that was said to Rey and Ben about home, family, coming home, coming back ... it was all leading up to their teaming up. Palpatine was wrong when he said he was Rey’s only family. Ben became her family, and that was part of the reason why she took his family name. Whoever wrote the caption “The belonging you seek is in Ben Solo’s arms” was right.

~ We still don’t know what, if any, ideology Ben held, how he felt about political power and different forms of government. That pretty much reinforces my belief that for him this has never been about politics, it’s all been personal for him.

~ Ben’s death is problematic if he is supposed to represent people who have been abused and made poor life choices. It’s a beautiful sacrifice, but did Rey really have to die and necessitate it? She could have been mortally wounded, and he could have healed her without dying himself.

~ If passing his life force to Rey cost his life, Ben should have died before Rey kissed him.

~ Ben’s death is tragic, but not technically a tragedy in the literary sense, because it’s not about learning how to avoid making mistakes like his. For all his faults (narcissism, anger that manifests in violence), Ben didn’t have a particular fatal flaw. He fell because he was a victim of circumstances and forces beyond his control. He died saving the woman he loved, which sounds like a good thing.

~ I’m surprised the Lars homestead was still standing after it seemed to have burned to ash in A New Hope, and I find it difficult to believe that on a planet like Tatooine someone else would not have claimed it.

~ The title refers to both Ben and Rey, since Rey becomes a Skywalker

~ From a certain point of view, Reylos and Rey Skywalkers were both right, and both wrong.

~ Why didn’t Ben become a Force ghost like Luke and Leia? Can he become one in the future? I find the matter of whether a Jedi/Force-user leaves behind their physical body or fades away to become one with the Force, and whether they become capable of manifesting as a ghost, sketchy and inconsistent.

~ What is Rey going to do now? Was she moving into the Lars homestead? Will she raise a family of her own? I think it unlikely that she would fall in love with anyone as deeply as she did with Kylo, and I think she might be hesitant to have biological children who would inherit her (Palpatine) Force abilities, but I can picture her adopting and/or mentoring children.

~ The theme of IX seems to be “You’re not alone,” the way 8’s was “Failure is the greatest teacher.” It is the lesson Rey, Finn, Poe, and Ben each learn. But in the end Rey does seem alone.

~ Rey’s greatest fears were being alone and being insignificant. Is the takeaway supposed to be that she is okay with being alone? That would go against the movie’s overarching theme. Similarly, Star Wars is about family, and while that theme definitely comes through, it would have been so well punctuated if the story ended with the main characters starting families.

~ Nothing was resolved regarding the government(s) of the galaxy. Is it in a state of anarchy now? Were they able to learn from the mistakes of the past two republics?

~ Did Rey, Ben, the Jedi, and/or the Resistance bring balance to the Force? Is the corresponding rise and fall of the light and dark finally over? Will this peace last? Will Rey be the last Jedi or will she pass on their legacy?

~ What was the point of this trilogy as a whole? What message are we supposed to take away from it? Is it still a Prodigal Son type of story?

Now I’m going to spend time thinking about how this will impact my fan fiction and my essays on the Christian themes of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. I will look forward to reading the (apparently expanded edition) novelization and having good quality screenshots and one more Shakespearean parody by Ian Doescher.

#The Rise of Skywalker spoilers

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