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anime-onlys · 3 years

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Spring '21 anime list: What I tried, what I'm watching, and first impressions!

Shaman King (2021)

I hadn't heard about this show until the reboot was announced, and it seems neat so I'll give it a shot! Hesitation isn't quite the right word, but I am watching cautiously because there's a lot about early 2000's anime that should stay in the early 2000's. I'm prepared to take a certain amount of product-of-its-time-ness, but only so much.

I really like its unique visual style. It feels like it's got a similar vibe to Soul Eater and TWEWY with its chunky proportions and face design, and the squash-and-stretch animation really lends itself to comedic moments. I feel like there are some eminently cosplayable designs in my future.

Character-wise, it's only been one episode but I'm taking a liking to Yoh. Based on the OP I hope that Ryuu will be an early-antagonist-turned-loudmouth-friend like JJBA's Okuyasu or Sk8's Shadow. That's one of my favorite character tropes.

The World Ends With You the Animation

My friend is a huge TWEWY fan, so our group was really looking forward to this anime. I saw a little of the gameplay when the Switch version was released, up to the end of episode 1's plot. I know it's going to be excellent story wise, and I already may be planning on making cosplay of that Reaper with the skeleton hoodie.

I love a unique visual style and an awesome soundtrack, of course TWEWY already had that coming in. The CGI Noise are a little clunky, but allow for some really great fight sequences. The characters' CGI models are nearly seamless with the 2D. It feels like the plot is moving fast, but according to my friend they just skipped some fetch quests and puzzle solving that wouldn't have been interesting to animate.

I'm really looking forward to this one each week!

Dragon Goes House-Hunting

One of those "eh, we'll give it a shot" shows. A bunch of us have been eyeing real estate lately, so at the very least it's topical. If done right, the concept could be fun!

We spent most of the episode HATING the dragon's character design. Its proportions are just...awkward in every way. The neck is extremely short and thick and leads into a human-muscled torso, the arms are tiny twigs, and the legs are a little too human and a little too thick to be anything but unnerving. It's bad.

Oddly, except for the dragon, the rest of the creature designs are pretty great! In contrast to a lot of anime, they let them be really non-human and had a good design sense. The humor was solid, the Monster Hunter references were on point, and the character interactions were fun. The OP is GREAT, too!

We'll be continuing this one! If you can make your eyes stop hating you for forcing them to look at the Monster Factory reject of a dragon, I'd say give it a shot.

You Can Make A Mug Too

Now that Yuru Camp is over, we wanted another lighthearted anime that might teach us something while it's at it. You Can Make A Mug Too was one of our picks to sample because one member of anime night has recently acquired a kiln.

My impression is an approving but unenthusiastic "Fine, really." You can definitely tell it's an anime made to bring in tourism to the town it's based in. The characters don't really grab me, but they set up a solid emotional backbone for the story. The production quality isn't stunning, I was hoping for some nice pottery wheel animation but didn't get any.

It's probably a decent show, but we won't watch any more because of the next one on the list.

Supercub

Going straight from You Can Make A Mug to Supercub was like going from store-brand ice pops to fresh gelato. I can already tell this is my favorite anime of the season, hands down.

First, the production quality is excellent. The backgrounds are beautiful, the score is understated but well done to the point that Debussey's Clair de Lune felt like it had been made for the scene it was used for.

More than the production quality alone, this anime's direction is exceptional. It takes 'show don't tell' and uses it perfectly, using body language and soundtrack and shot composition to communicate as much or more than the sparse dialogue. Like, they made my heart skip a beat with nothing but color grading. THAT kind of exceptional.

I haven't spoken much about the plot because I really have no idea where it's going to go. Will we fill in why Koguma is so alone, or will we only move forward to seeing her connect? Will the past of that Supercub come back to haunt her? This feels like an anime that can and will absolutely wreck me, but at the starting line all I can say is I'm READY.

If you only watch one thing this season, watch Supercub.

Continuing anime:

My Hero Academia Season 5:

This season is interesting because for the first time, I think I'm going into it with almost zero spoilers (Dabi's real name is the only one I have). The only plot spoiler I thought I had, that Hawks was somehow working with the League of Villains, was revealed at the end of episode 1. I really enjoy going into things blind so I'm looking forward to this season!

However, the OP is the most disappointing thing out there. Nothing about the song, animation or composition is memorable or even noteworthy. Bones and MHA have access to all the money and talent in the industry and they best they can do is "Fine, I guess".

Yuukoku no Moriarty season 2 (Split cour):

I really enjoyed Moriarty's first season, but the second part of a split-cour always has the risk of running off the rails. What I enjoyed most about the first cour was the reverse-whodunit formula: Here's a terrible noble and the people they hurt, how does Moriarty get rid of them while making it look like an accident? The end of cour 1 started to focus heavily on Sherlock and I don't want the show's namesake to end up sidelined.

Knowing Irene was coming, I was really hoping for a Scandal in Belgravia that follows the books...at all, where the end of the story is that Irene escapes with the photo (except this time aided by the Moriarty brothers). Few or no Sherlock adaptations actually want to engage with the sexism of the era or today's, and just want to paint her as a blackmailer or temptress instead of a woman holding onto the power to protect herself. The beginning was extremely promising, but that went off the rails pretty quick. I still haven't yet seen an adaptation of Irene Adler that I like.

Zombieland Saga: Revenge

I watch this show because it's fun and ridiculous, and I get to hear Mamoru Miyano having the time of his life in the recording booth. I love this show because it always ends up surprising me with its solid emotional backbone. It looks like this season is shaping up to be more of the same!

What blew me away was this episode was the first time I saw a CGI dance sequence that I LIKED. Ever. The characters used different mocap so they weren't eerily in sync, the song and dance itself was well made and supported by excellent camera direction and shot composition, there were 2D cuts to closeups of the dancers as well as audience, and they actually pushed facial expression!

It's a good time. Give it a shot.

#seasonal anime #spring anime #spring anime 2021 #shaman king #twewy #twewy the animation #dragon ie wo kau #yakunara mug cup mo #supercub #bnha #yuukoku no moriarty #zombieland saga revenge

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tfw-no-tennis · 4 years

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hxh....MUSICAL

as soon as i saw that a hunter x hunter musical from the year 2002 starring the OG 99 VAs existed, i knew i has to see this...so i set out and watched the nightmare of zoldyck (i would later find out that theres ANOTHER musical, which i plan to watch too)

luckily its all on youtube subbed! in 360 quality...oh hell yes lmao

ok i logically knew this was gonna be a musical but seeing the characters singing is like. a lot. THIS IS SO STRANGE

musical illumi is played by a woman which is interesting. shes got a good voice

i think they just panned to killua but it was so pixelated that i legitimately could not tell hvbadjkfbjkdsf

i have no idea whats going on vhbajdfhhajsdf theres a bunch of people falling over on stage...i think theyre dying? who are yall

oh shit backup dancers?

lmao illumi killed the backup dancers rip.

oh that IS killua lol. s/o to the 3 pixels that are visible

is this gonna be the zoldyck arc but a musical? lmao

OH WAIT IS THAT KURAPIKA AND LEORIO? i cant even tell lmaoooo

i can 100% tell these are fan subs lmaooo i love bad fan subs SO MUCH it makes a viewing experience even better

this is p much just a musical version of the manga/anime so far lmao i love it

the way theyre spelling zoldyck is. a lot

is every character gonna get an intro song. how much of this musical is singing and how much of it is dialogue cause theres defs a range w/musicals

lmao i love gon leorio and kurapikas interactions even here, they rlly feel like two parents being dragged around by their energetic kid

i cant even see the set at all so im just gonna assume theres like, the gate and all that behind them, but it all just looks like a dark wall to me lmao

i love singing exposition

HISOKAS IN THIS???????????????????? oh my lorddddd

OH i see now in the description that hes played by the 99 VA too lmao i love it

wow musical hisoka rlly b like [writes himself into the zoldyck family arc]

oh here we go w/the song introducing the zoldycks

damn grandpa got mad flips

this is. wild

its especially wild that alluka isnt here bc she like...didnt even exist yet at this point in the story

zoldyck family sitcom wow

i see the gon/killua romance is still going strong in the musical

oh so they did all the training and goin thru the door stuff offscreen lol

this is actually doing a pretty good job expanding on the canon stuff from this arc lol so props. espec w/showing more of killua being scared of illumi

oooh this is interesting actually, this is like....an AU where illumi is present during this arc, and how that would change things. And Also They Sing

the zoldycks are so fucked up lmao

also i feel like theres some ‘early adaptation’ character weirdness going on, like w/the grandpa, who seems much less intense here than in the anime (at least after seeing him in the yorknew arc), and milluki, who seems like a gag character here lmao

oh my god lmao is hisoka here to visit illumi?

the hilarious irony of illumi telling killua that assassins cant have friends, then going to hang out with his good buddy hisoka

kurapika is the only one here with a brain cell (for now)

ah yes hisoka and illumi doing their nasty murder flirting thing

HISOKA IS SO NASTYYYY I HATE HIM tho his actor is very good and smarmy

OH its canary!! is there uh. blackface goin on there. i cant actually tell, what with there being only 3 pixels present at any given time

really love how half of this is just the regular arc but with the characters singing abt stuff during it

the lady playing killuas mom has a rlly good screeching voice jesus lmao

ohh i love musical fighting so much

the sound fx on kurapikas sticks are cracking me up

butlers got mad cartwheels

oh theyre doing the coin thing! this is so out of order lmao

oh my god i love that theyre doing like, sick dance moves while coin flipping

ah the zoldyck messenger hawk makes an appearance. i love that thats canon and real

the 12 yr old gay romance is REAL even here

the subs seems to be translated very literally, especially in the songs, so its honestly not clear what theyre even singing about vbsjkdjhfskjfd

gon and killua singing about each other is adorable tbh. also i love how silva asks killua abt his friends and killua is like yeah i made some friends. and then only talks abt gon ahjsduhfabhskdf gayboy

ok so the zoldyck arc is like, ending, but theres still an hr of musical left so whats even gonna happen lmao. also where did hisoka go

oh no the audio and video arent synced anymore huvbhjadfbhjsakdf

oooh they asked canary to come w/them, thats cool

theyre having a party??? hvbajdsfbhasjkdf

oh shit??? what did zeburo just do to killua??? WHATS GOING ONNN lol this is UNCHARTED TERRITORY

OH GOD IT WAS ILLUMI. SHOULDVE KNOWNNN

omggg all their formal outfits....everyone cheering wildly at kurapika is cute

LEORIO AND KURAPIKA DANCING.....

the fact that both killua and gon are taller than kurapika in this is rlly funny

the idea that the zoldycks are also highly trained ballroom dancers is super hilarious to think about, even moreso when you consider how isolationist they are

seriously grandpas got mad flips

also i love leorios outfit

this feels like a filler arc tbh. and i dont mean that in a bad way!

leorio trying to get kurapika to go to the hot springs with him lmaoooo

HVDSJBJFSBFJHS HISOKAS BACK. IN DISGUISE. OH MY GOD

hisokas stage presence is fantastic gotta say

damnnnn dad zoldycks got mad flips too. guess it runs in the family

props to the actors for managing to keep their wigs on while flipping around like that

its so fuckgin funny thats hisoka just introduces himself as illumis friend, when this whole arc is all about how assassins Cannot Have Friends

so hisoka is just here trying to get family approval too huh

gon miming a fishing trip was adorable and realistic...sometimes u get skunked and It Just Be Like That

leorio is rlly tryin to shoot his shot w/kurapika and kp is just Not Realizing huh vbjsdufjbsaukjf

wow leorio breakin the fourth wall like that lmao

wow so illumi hacked killua. rude

hisoka and illumi are lowkey hilarious in this

leorio is rlly sending every signal possible to kurapika and kp is like. No

leorio: killua is a scary murder baby, but also im adopting him

kurapika singing abt how weird it is having friends after dedicating their life to Revenge(tm) is v on brand

HISOKA OH BOY

LMAOOOO HISOKA IS SUCH A FUCKING SNITCH I CANT

no wonder illumi didnt wanna tell him abt his evil plan lmaoooo he fucked up even telling hisoka that much clearly

the zoldyck siblings just staring at hisoka in confusion bc How The Fuck Did This Clown Get In Our House hvbhjdksfnjksdf

you can tell the subs are off when the audience is cracking up but you dont even see a joke there lmao

oh my goddd hisoka using bungee gum to make everyone dance is. hilarious

oh my god synchronized dancing

HVBSHDJFBJDSKFHBSJ illumi doing a dance routine independent of hisoka and hisoka being like ????? vhbjsdkhfjkjsdnfkj THIS IS HILARIOUS

supremely funny to me how illumi makes such a big point abt assassins not having friends, yet hisoka is announcing himself as illumis friend w/every given opportunity hvbhajdkdfhjskf

this feels so filler arc i love it. thats so charming to me since the 2011 anime doesnt have any filler (from what i can tell?)

kurapika and leorio rlly feel like killuas parents here lmaooo

this is all dramatic but kurapika keeps repeating what leorio says and its cracking me up hvbajhkdhfbjsk

i lov this fambly

ah, even in the musical illumi is still such a manipulative bastard

i feel like the quality just went down EVEN MORE, which i didnt think was even possible hvbhjkdsfskf. at least the audio is synced w/the video again

illumis got a good evil laugh

this is the exact brand of dramatic angsty filler content that i was hoping for in this lmao i love it

oooh more zoldycks

honestly this is more how i expected the zoldyck arc to go in canon hbshjdkujfkjsfdas

dramatic gay filler angst + somewhat incorrect fansubs = perfection

OH SHIT CANARY

BRO DID SHE JUST DIE???? OMFG

the subs keep calling illumis power ‘spells’ which seems to imply that illumi is some sort of assassin wizard rather than a nen user hvbsudhfkjsdjgf

come to think of it, what point was the manga at when this musical was written? it has to be pretty early on, maybe just as nen was being introduced

gon boutta go ham on illumi...Get His Ass

OHHHH GON DOING THE ICONIC ARM GRAB....ARM GRAB REPRISE

gon doin the good ole reliable shounen ‘punch your friend and yell at them so they snap out of a funk’ lol

i do love how typically shounen this is. friendship speeches! but delivered by SONG!

illumis main hobby is butting in at the worst possible moments

HISOKAS BACK OH BOY

hisokas playing card blocked killuas hit hvbhjakdhsfjnakdsf thats like in jojo when those manga blocked dios knives

wow the whole zoldyck squad is here

ooh forbidden zoldyck lore lmao

killua: mom u guys are lame im joining this much cooler family now. bye

i love how hisoka is just weirdly lurking around for all this zoldyck drama lmao

silva seems like such a bro in this but i feel like hes rlly not like that in canon vhauidfhbsjhdkjfk

oh nope there he goes w/the evil laugh lmaooooo

sorry dude but leorio is his dad now

gon sniffing zeburo hgbajkdfshbjkdfjnsjdk oh my god

oh hell yeah some synchronized main character finale dancing

actor showcase! everyone loves kurapika which, same

ah so the director of this musical also directed the sailor moon musicals, which i didnt know existed but of course that exists...thats funny considering the hxh mangaka is married to the sailor moon mangaka

anyways that was fun honestly!!!! i fuckgin love musicals, and musical adaptations of non-musical source materials can be like, SO different tonally, but this honestly felt like a fun filler

it was really interesting seeing something based on the canon from this early on - as i said above, some of the characterizations (like the zoldycks) seems a bit different than we’re used to, but others were spot on - like hisoka only showing up intermittently to sow chaos and do nothing else vhjkadhbfhkjdsfnj im assuming the yorknew arc hadnt happened at this point, but hisokas actions in this musical were hilariously similar to how he acted in the yorknew arc, so, props.

plus it was cool to see the ‘what if’ factor w/hisoka and illumi also being there, espec illumi interacting w/killua bc its so wildly different from how killua reacts to any of his other family members - hes clearly scared of illumi, in a way he isnt w/anyone else, and that was done well here w/the scene where illumi threatens killua’s friends to get killua to listen to him

also the angst was honestly great, and there was some REALLY sweet wholesome parts that i loved. and the music wasnt half bad either!!

i think the VAs did a great job playing the characters - hisokas VA was especially great (and i really loved kurapika too). gons hair was not very similar to how it looks in the show so it was a little more obvious that he was being played by a grown woman, but still a great performance.

anyways fun times, i love musicals and this was a fun ole 2000s filler shounen musical adaptation

#lj watches hxh #well. hxh ancillary material #also we're almost done w/the chimera ant arc but i still gotta edit up my heavens arena stuff hvbhjsdfbjdskgs epic fails #i have all my chimera ant liveblogs ready to go but i dont wanna post things outta order Ls #hxh

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eldunea · 5 years

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If Lotor was a Pokémon Masters character…

STATS.

LOTOR & ZOROARK. category: strike (special). type: dark. move 1: snarl move 2: night daze trainer move 1: x special attack. specialized trainer move: foul is fair—sharply raises the user’s speed and critical hit rate. sync move name: intellectual eclipse. (causes zoroark to activate bond phenomenon form until end of battle.) passive skill: illusory evasion—this pokémon is harder to hit than others. weakness: fighting.

LOTOR & ESPEON (sygna suit). category: tech. type: psychic. move 1: psychic. move 2: psyshock. move 3: toxic. specialized trainer move: power of alchemy—sharply raises special attack and special defense. sync move name: world-shattered psyche. passive skill: power of alchemy—special attack may increase when hits land. weakness: bug.

TEXT.

Basic dialogue: “Hm.” “Hmph.” “I see.” ”Well, you see…” “I do love a challenge.” “Do the impossible!” “Not a bad idea.” “I would prefer to do otherwise.” Vs. quote: “Your defeat is imminent!” Sending out Pokémon: “Let’s fight!” After Pokémon faints: “I must have miscalculated.” Level up: “My strength is incalculable!” Good Morning Message: “Every day is a day to grow and learn. Use it wisely, [player name]!” Pokémon Center Quote 1: I’m not just a scientist, you know. I’ve studied almost every field, from history to fine arts. But no matter how much I fill my life with learning…it’s simply not the same without my Pokémon. Joining you was well worth it! Pokémon Center Quote 2: On another note, what do you think Lear is up to? He may be a prince, but he certainly doesn’t act the part. A prince must be kind, humble, caring…and he’s none of those things! Who raised him? Pokémon Center quote 3: My studies tell me that Trainers’ strategies fall into two categories. There are those who win by strength, and there are those who win by deception. I prefer to win through the strength of my bond with my Pokémon. …Of course, I could prefer to win by deception, but I’ve lied and told you otherwise. (winks) Pokémon Center quote 4: It’s okay to trick your opponents. It’s very common on the battlefield to make your adversary believe one thing while actually planning another. But no matter what, you must NEVER lie to your Pokémon! That would be unforgivable! Activating Sync move quote: “Shine with the force of our minds!” Flavor text: A stubborn scholar who packs a punch. He and his Pokémon have as much brawn as they have brains, and that’s a lot of brawn!

STORY TEXT.

Honerva: The first experiment showed that the experimental version of X Special Attack increases a Pokémon’s regular move strength by a factor of one and a half. But it increases the sync move strength by a factor of four! Lotor: Well, it could be because the substance inside the X Special Attack causes differing chemical reactions according to the different proteins that are activated by the use of different attacks…Or it could simply be magic. Honerva: I say it’s magic. (Exclamation points appear over both of their heads and they turn around.) Honerva: I thought I sensed visitors. Lotor: And what brings you here? Dialogue options: 1) We want you on our team! 2) Uh…we were just wondering if… Lotor (if 1): You…you really came all this way just to… Lotor (if 2): I can tell by the look on your face. You want me to join your team for the PML, correct? Lotor: (sprite sighs and he looks to the side) I haven’t battled in ages. I’m sorry, but it’s a no. Barry: But this was a two-hour trip! Are you saying we walked all the way up here for nothing? Lotor: I didn’t come here to fight. I came here to learn. I’d be honored to fight by the side of such illustrious Trainers, but…I just won’t have the energy to join a team. Rosa: That’s not true! You studied and beat Leagues at the same time, didn’t you? Lotor: (smiles sadly) I taught myself the secrets of science while I made my way through my fair share of Leagues. That is true. But that’s not the kind of life I want to lead right now. I want all my focus to be on my work. There’s no time for distractions. (All characters look visibly disappointed.) Honerva: Son, do you mind if I have a word with these Trainers? Lotor: I won’t say no. Honerva: All right then. Come with me.

(scene cuts to outside the lab)

Barry: I know all about you. You said to Wallace that Training wasn’t a real job unless you were in a League. You were the one who tried to get Lotor to go back to school! Rosa: If you’re here to lecture us about what we love, stop right there. You’re wrong. Honerva: Oh, far from it, dear. I’m here to tell you exactly how to convince him to join you. (Barry and Rosa exchange looks of surprise.) Rosa: You have what you want from him. He’s studying with you now. Why would you help us? Honerva: In the past, I wanted nothing more than for my son to give up his profession and return to school. I used to argue with Lotor all the time about battling. I said…some truly awful things that I regret. And now that he isn’t battling anymore, I feel like he’s missing something from his very sense of self. I see now what I couldn’t see before. Battling makes his life whole. Rosa: So how do we convince him to battle again? Honerva: Lotor is as stubborn as I am—which means he’ll never back down from a good challenge. If you want his teammateship, give him a challenge that he can’t refuse. Barry: Then why don’t you do it yourself? Honerva: The decision to give up battling was ultimately his, and he hates being questioned by me. If I say a word, he’ll know what I’m up to right away. But if it comes from you, he won’t suspect a thing. (winks) Barry: Give him a challenge? What could we possibly challenge him wi— Rosa: I got it! I know exactly what to do. Come on, [player name]! Let’s go get us a new teammate!

(scene fades back into the lab)

Lotor: Oh. You’re back. Rosa: We have a challenge for you. Lotor: Which is…? Rosa: We want to fight you three-on-three. You defeat [player name] here, and we’ll go home and never bother you again. But if you lose… Lotor: I come with you and join your PML team? (shakes head) Not a chance. Barry (to Honerva): It’s not working! Rosa: O-oh really? And are you just saying that because you’re scared? Lotor: What?! Honerva: That’s right. You’re just scared of defeat, aren’t you? Lotor: No. I’m saying this because I’m being set up. Mom, I KNOW you went out there with them so you could put them up to this! Barry (to Honerva): Busted. Rosa: Please. That just sounds like an excuse. You talk big with all your League badges, but on the inside you’re just…you’re just a big fat scaredy-cat! Lotor: That’s not what I—oh, FINE. But I would like to add one more condition. Rosa: Yes? Lotor: You won’t just have to defeat me. If you want to have me at your side, you’ll have to go through my mom first. Barry: Oh, and I guess now you want to hide behind her so you can— Honerva: That’s enough. Just take the deal. (steps forward) I’ll admit I’m not much of a fighter myself, but I will do my best!

(Battle ensues, with Honerva and two scientists. Honerva battles with the Espeon that belongs to Lotor in his sygna suit.)

Lotor: Well, you certainly gave them a run for their money. Honerva: Didn’t know the world’s greatest scientist was also a damn good battler, did you? I hardly even knew myself! (laughs) Rosa: It was a pleasure, Miss Sincline. And now… Lotor: (smirks) It’s time for you to lose!

(Battle ensues, with Lotor and two scientists.)

Lotor: (hangs head and sighs) Well, you got me. Barry: Why the long face? Your mom said you loved battling. Shouldn’t you be excited? Lotor: I…I was really hoping I could stay here so I could spend some more time with my mom. She and I weren’t always on the best of terms, but now we finally have a chance to make it up to each other. Honerva: But that’s not the real reason you’re so upset, now is it? Lotor: (shakes his head) You read me like a textbook, Mom. You’re right. It isn’t. Rosa: What’s wrong? Lotor: If I tell you this, you must promise not to tell ANYONE. Barry: Sure thing. Rosa: Of course! Lotor: (closes his eyes briefly before opening them again) It’s about Lear. The man who founded this place. I’ve…I’ve met him before, and I can tell there’s something wrong with him. I wanted to believe he was a good person because he brought so much happiness to others by creating Pasio. But bad people can do good things too, and I wouldn’t put it past him to be up to something nefarious. I feel as though by participating in the PML, I’d be putting my stamp of approval on his poor character and whatever he’s hiding from us…But I suppose I don’t have a say in the matter, now, do I? Rosa: You don’t have to join us if you don’t want to. Barry: Wha— Rosa: I’m sorry. I challenged you because I didn’t know how much you wanted to avoid doing this. I shouldn’t have forced you into something you want to stay away from this badly. You can stay. Barry: But— Rosa: He’s right, though. Lear isn’t the best person in the world. And while I want to give Lear a chance, I don’t blame Lotor at all for feeling the way he does. Let’s just leave him alone. (The two of them turn around to leave.) Lotor: Wait! (Rosa and Barry whirl around.) Lotor: I’ll go with you. Rosa: But you just said— Lotor: First, though. Are we all in agreement that Lear is not a good person? Dialogue options: 1) Yes, definitely! 2) I don’t know him well enough. Lotor’s response to #1: Good. Then what I have to ask of you shouldn’t be an issue. Help me keep an eye on Lear. Lotor’s response to #2: Then I suppose helping me keep an eye on him wouldn’t hurt, would it? Lotor: And if anything goes wrong…we’ll just have to take care of him. Rosa: What do you think, Barry? Barry: I mean he’s probably not evil, but if he is, then let’s give it to him! Rosa: All right! Lotor: So…you’ll really do it? You’ll help me? Dialogue options: 1) Yes, of course! 2) You can count on us! Lotor: Excellent. I’ll pack my things immediately. Honerva: If you need someone to take you back to Pasio, I have a teleporter to send you back in a flash. I wouldn’t want you to go walking another two hours! Rosa: Thanks, Miss Sincline. Honerva: You’re welcome back here anytime.

#alma te anul; the history of self. || HEADCANON #rea varda; our destiny. || POKÉMON AU

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nightqueendany · 5 years

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That Vanity Fair Article

You all know the one....

Now, ever since this article came out earlier today, I’ve seen all number of reactions to it and of course did a bit of gloating this morning. However, OF COURSE there are some in the fandom who shall not be named - COUGHJONSASCOUGH - who STILL think this is all fake.

They believe that Vanity Fair found some Jonerys fanfiction and “thought” it was a real script and so wrote an entire fucking article about it - I guess the Jonsas think this was done without checking sources - and so it MUST be fake. Because, as per this article, DarkSansa is TOTALLY a thing AND Jon loving Daenerys is EXPLICITLY stated for all the world to see.

So, you know, if it doesn’t mention “Dark Dany” or “Jonsa” it’s “fakenews”.

However, I’m sorry to say - no, wait, actually I’m fucking ECSTATIC to say because I made this entire blog because of these fucking hater idiots who just can’t accept the TRUTH - that THIS IS ALL REAL.

Now, how do I KNOW this is all real and Vanity Fair didn’t fuck up and just quote a bunch of fanfiction they found somewhere?

Well, aside from the fact that Vanity Fair is an INTERNATIONALLY REPUTABLE PUBLICATION and OF COURSE they wouldn’t post anything quoting a printed, written source unless it was actually true...

The author of the article states that the quotes featured come DIRECTLY FROM THE SCRIPTS.

Now, the question is, where did they get the scripts because you can’t find shit online.

Well, there’s a fucking reason for that:

These scripts are archived in the WRITERS GUILD FOUNDATION library in Los Angeles, California.

You cannot get copies of them, it is not a lending library so you can’t take scripts home, and there aren’t digital copies (at least not ones available to the public; I think it’s possible to get digital copies of things for educational purposes but not sure).

HOWEVER, the library is open to the public, as stated above in the Vanity Fair article and on the Writer’s Guild Foundation website:

“All scripts must be read on site.”

So, as stated in the Vanity Fair article, HBO has made the scripts of previous seasons available for some time at the WGF Library. People have been able to go in there and access them for years but, likely because you have to be there to read them, not many people would ever bother to do so.

But that’s JUST what the people at Vanity Fair did. The author and probably an assistant or two “poured over them for hours” at the WGF Library and clearly took notes (I guess you can’t take photos of the scripts...? The website says you can bring laptops and phones into the library but it’s not stated whether photography is allowed).

SO FOR THE LAST GODDAMN FUCKING TIME:

JONSA IS OVER!!!!!!

POLITICAL JON IS OVER!!!!!!!

JON LOVES DAENERYS!!!!!!!!!

DAENERYS IS THE YOUNGER MORE BEAUTIFUL QUEEN.

DARK SANSA IS CANON!!!!

AND DAVOS TOTALLY HAS A CRUSH ON MISSANDEI!!!!! (lol)

Oh yeah and to those Jonsa shippers who also claim Kit not knowing when Jon and Dany first start to fall for each other, etc. because of the 7x07 commentary, I touch on that HERE. Essentially: 1) the commentary was recorded like, over a YEAR after it was all filmed, 2) Lena can’t even remember her own lines let alone directional lines in between dialogue, as Kit says “bullshit bullshit bullshit, my line, bullshit bullshit” because the actors barely read the scripts unless it is their line, and 3) everything is filmed out of sync so of course the whole process is difficult to remember anyway, let alone the specific moment Jon and Dany fall in love because it was all filmed out of order.

ALSO to those Jonsa shippers that say “this directly contradicts what Benioff and Weiss say about Jon in 7x06 in the Inside the Episode when Jon apparently notices Dany falling in love with him but Jon not falling in love with her blah blah blah” - stop being so fucking purposefully dense. You know what Weiss and Benioff said. You know it. You heard it. You’re just trying to make it seem like that’s not what they meant. But they did.

“I don’t think EITHER ONE of THEM really knew exactly how powerful THEIR feelings were TOWARDS EACH OTHER until these moments.”

So that makes it pretty fucking clear the FEELINGS are for EACH OTHER, not just “Jon notices Dany’s feelings for him.” - Nuh uh dumb nuts. That’s not at all what Benioff said. He said TOWARDS EACH OTHER. As in, BOTH OF THEM.

“Just the notion of falling for someone, that involves weakness. That’s not something a queen does. But SHE feels that happening AND HE feels that happening FOR HER.”

If we’re gonna do the “Jonsa” thing, let’s compare speech patterns:

“She FEELS [that happening] AND

He FEELS [that happening] FOR HER.”

What is the “that” that’s happening? “Falling.”

So, we can replace this with -

She FEELS herself FALLING [FOR HIM] AND

He FEELS himself FALLING FOR HER

We can’t just suddenly replace Jon’s [that happening] with “her falling for him” - You get “He feels [her falling for him] for her.” Nope. Doesn’t make sense. The [That happening] has to be the same in both parts of Benioff’s sentence otherwise it doesn’t make any sense.

And the [that happening] is Jon and Dany falling in love. So gtf outta here with that bullshit.

....

But likely, the antis will still swear up and down it’s all fake. HBO sent the Writer’s Guild fake scripts because they knew the public could access them and didn’t want people to know the truth or they sent them fake scripts knowing some geeks would go read them and perpetuate the lie that Jon actually loves Dany so that the surprise of Jonsa will be EVEN BETTER BECAUSE IT WASN’T EVEN IN THE SCRIPTS, etc. etc.

I mean, ship whatever the fuck you want. You wanna ship Jon and Sansa, fucking ship Jon and Sansa. You wanna hate Daenerys? Hate Daenerys. But don’t act all surprised or offended when we call you out on your bullshit when you flat out deny canon. We LITERALLY have the fucking receipts.

#ANTI JONSA #ANTI POLITICAL JON #ANTI UNDERCOVER JON #JONERYS IS CANON #GET OVER IT

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adaru32 · 5 years

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My Devil May Cry V Review

Felt that I’d like to share my thoughts on a sequel of my most favourite video game series. Would’ve done so much sooner but of course, distractions and other obstacles getting in the way. I apologize for the long read, and have tried to sum it up as much as possible. I can't decide whether this game or DMC3 is my most favourite. (My most to least favourite would be DMC3 and DMCV tied, then DMC1, DMC4, and DMC2. Gameplay-wise, DMC4 would be the least favourite despite DMC2 being easy. Not counting the reboot since it's not a part of the Devil May Cry universe, and I didn't really care much for that game). I had a lot of fun with this game. Even V was a nice, fresh character to play as (Felt more could've been done with him gameplay-wise, though). I even had a fangasm with the tracks playing on mission 18.

Other things I liked about this game:

1. The main 3 Sparda bois finally getting some badass-looking ultimate forms. 2. The concepts and visuals of everything, despite how minimal some of them are. 3. Nice to see my 2nd favourite character back (Vergil). 4. The variety of things to do. 5. The references/easter eggs used from the past games, and others. 6. The story, despite some plot holes from the previous games still not filled yet and how rushed the pacing went in some parts. 7. The fluidity of everything. 8. The characterization and impact with some scenes (Hard to explain but it has to do with the whole 'actions speak louder than words' kind of thing). 9. Photo mode...Must I say more about that.

The things that I didn't really like and can criticize about:

1. The music style I feel suits a JRPG game or a dance club more than a Devil May Cry game. Didn't really stick with me that much and felt I had to mute it completely in my 2nd playthrough (Plan to keep it muted in my future playthroughs). Not as memorable as the previous games' tracks in my opinion. I know I can use some of the previous tracks' music as battle themes, and I stated above that mission 18's music gave me a fangasm, but I don't really wanna listen to the music in the rest of the game since I don't really care much for it. I admit Cavalier Angelo's theme was all right and sounded pretty Castlevania-ish. 2. The ending boss battle was cheap (I hear it does get more challenging in the much harder modes, though). I understand it's for story progression purposes but there could've been more done, and even more of a challenge. Even when Dante battles Urizen Vergil on mission 17, I expected some type of crazy transformation and other stuff to happen after he eats the fruit. Would've been a cool idea if he did like a 2nd transformation half-way through the battle because the fruit's power would be too much for him, and then have Nero show up with V around that time, and Nero ends up fighting alongside you after setting V aside to safety. 3. Like what's stated in point 6 above, there are still plot holes and contradictions from the previous games in the story that don't fully explain what really happens, and why things are the way they are now. One example, how Vergil was able to hook up with someone and get it on with her. Hopefully they save that info for another title, or something. 4. It would've been nice to have more unlockable costumes for the characters. But I can see why they wouldn't really allow that. It has to do with not wanting to make the same mistake like they did with another one of their games where it was basically a costume unlocking simulator. And that would also mean more development time which would push the game's release date (And you know how some people can get heated over delays). Plus there's the mod community so those that have DMCV on PC can have fun with custom stuff. At the same time, CapCom needs a bit of a breather from working on this game, and they want to progress on getting other things out of the way before coming back to Devil May Cry. Like what DMC3 and DMC4 went through, there most likely will be a Special Edition with most of the features added that the fans have asked for. They probably want to keep that hush-hush till the time comes, though (And most likely some time after the next gen consoles come out). 5. I understand that part of Devil May Cry is about cheesy dialogue and some silliness. But I felt the dialogue got a little too cheesy, and some parts got a little too silly (Not as bad as the reboot and DMC2, though). 6. Like what's stated in the other point 6 above, some parts of the game felt rushed. With what they have in this game already I feel deserves to have a couple more missions added, or so, to add more to its story and gameplay. This may come off as selfish but this is just how I feel. Even for the ending (Which was a nice ending by the way), it felt like something was missing...I can't describe it but I felt that something else could've been done or added in the ending and the secret ending. That alternate ending is hilarious, though. It's like the game gets mad at you for finishing it too early, which explains its bluntness 😆 7. Even though the animations and everything else in the game were nice and smooth, I felt that some of the characters' facial movements didn't sync well with some of the dialogue in the cutscenes, and some of their expressions became stone faced or puppet-like at times. A couple examples are when Dante says, "Guess I get to see with my own eyes". And Trish saying, "It's the other way around, Dante". I shouldn't complain about that kind of stuff because I know video games aren't all about graphics and visuals, but just thought I'd express a little thing I can nitpick at. 8. CapCom did an amazing job on the characters but (Y'all are probably gonna hate me for this) there are some facial features I can nitpick at with everyone. Nico, Morrison, V, and the civilians I have no problems with since they have their own concepts. The rest, there are some things that kinda bug me. I understand that they're supposed to be based off of real life models (Which are all good-looking) with some tweaks made to make them look like the characters, and are meant to look as realistic as possible. But they could've at least fixed some of those features a bit more to make them look exactly like their previous selves, only a bit older. I'm aware that humans' looks can keep changing over time, and look completely different than they did before without the use of surgery. Even Matt Walker gave a brief explanation on why Vergil's not Dante's identical twin anymore, which can make sense. But...I dunno how else to explain it. 9. Trish, Lady, Patty, Morrison, and Kyrie were wasted potential. I understand they brought these characters back for fanservice purposes, a little bit of story progression, and CapCom was on a budget and timer for how many figures they can add. But more could've been done with these characters to bring more characterization and impact. I expected Kyrie and Patty to make physical appearances in this game as well. Let alone Lucia, but I can understand from the DMCV prequel novel on why they couldn't/wouldn't make Lucia appear again. It also would've been nice to see more flashbacks of the Sparda bois from their childhood, and even add Sparda in a scene. In conclusion, I loved this game and I consider it as one of my top favourite Devil May Cry games (And overall video games) of all time (Like what I stated above). It was definitely worth the 10+ years of waiting. I feel that there are some other points (Both positive and negative) missing in my review, but I think this is pretty much all I can think of what I liked and didn't like about this game. Can't wait to see what else CapCom comes up with for this series.

#devil may cry v #dmcv #devil may cry 5 #dmc5 #my review #capcom

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gadingsaurus · 2 years

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since 2020 (thanks to pandemic i guess) i have finally watched the so-called tv shows people been talking about! first ever in years (after like, friends and golden girls cause i don’t really have the power to watch any recurring tv shows) so here are the lists! (it’s actually many)

Stranger Things. (3 seasons, 25 episodes, 7/10) nice characters and really nice styling. kinda made me straight for including maya hawke in here and making her wear the scoops ahoy attire....

Over The Garden Wall (1 season, 10 episodes. 9/10) how do you make things like this anymore

Barry. (2 seasons, 16 episodes, 9/10) genuinely disturbing of how good it is. made me screech in terror and laugh in terror too. bill hader is game.

Fleabag. (2 seasons, 12 episodes, 9.5/10) one of the most freakin hilarious tv shows ever with nothing but impeccable storytelling, editing, casting, dialogue.. PWB is amazing for making and playing fleabag. season 1 is gorge and season 2 is OUT. OF. THIS. WORLD.

The Midnight Gospel. (1 season, 8 episodes, 9.8/10) knowing now that this is based on a podcast, it’s one of the most bizzare animation to be synced up to a really personal, existential, raw conversations between two people that has gone through god knows what.. and then the goddamn alien cows get to die on a slaughter machine. so i guess that’s nice. also the goddamn bird feather episode I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE I’M SOBBING RIGHT NOW

Avatar : The Legend Of Korra. (4 seasons, 52 episodes, 8/10) WHAT the HECK KUVIRA oh my GAWD i’m goddamn straight now

When They See Us. (1 season, 4 episodes, 9/10) scarring to see, but everyone was phenomenal. to the last second.

A Series Of Unfortunate Events. (3 seasons, 25 episodes. 8/10) if i say something in the line of.. it did better than the movie, well yes it is. but the thing is i haven’t read the books and i don’t know what the hecc happened at the end. they made really nice quotes tho.

Cowboy Bebop. (1 season, 26 episodes. 8.5/10) what’s not to love? this has EVERYTHING! even a psychedelic episode and cosmic criminals!

Sex Education. (3 seasons, 24 episodes. 8.5/10) i love being nostalgic to my high school life and feeling like i have such an amazing cast to go through with.. which i do but it’s real people with real stories and that was only a semester ago.

WandaVision. (1 season, 8 episodes, 7/10) ok ok i get the jizz.

The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. (1 season, 8 episodes, 7/10) ok ok ok ok i get the jizz.

Squid Game. (1 season, 8 episodes, 8/10) it’s nice. my heart was beating fast. i hate tug-o-war anyways.

UNHhhh (it’s a youtube series but 6 season in, goddamn 165 episodes. just....69/10) WHAT IS HAPPENING ANYMORE. MY LIFE HAS FOREVER CHANGED. THERE’S NO TURNING BACK NOW, BARBARA.

that’s it for now. will update in coming months.

#watching at home #series

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eddycurrents · 7 years

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For the week of 28 August 2017

Just one comic stood out as a favourite for me this week; Generations: The Archers - Hawkeye & Hawkeye by Kelly Thompson & Stefano Raffaele. Published by Marvel.

Like the previous Generations one-shots, this follows the formula of a modern day hero sent back in time (or wherever) to interact with their predecessor. Also like the previous one-shots, there’s no explanation as to why or how that’s happening, which is a detriment to the overall plot, but here it’s easy to look past.

The main plot of the issue hinges on a straight-forward enough contest of champions to see the “best marksman alive”, with other characters being drawn to a mysterious island...mysteriously. It’s simple, but it allows Kelly Thompson to do what’s best about this issue and that’s character development. It also helps that there’s a good amount of humour throughout the issue that keeps the dialogue zipping along.

One of the editorial points of the Generations exercise is for modern heroes to learn or be influenced by something from the past (or whenever) heroes and Thompson delivers that in spades with the conversations between Kate and Clint. The mentor/student dynamic is mirrored in the revelation of who’s behind the contest and there’s a nice moment of revelation for Kate.

It’s also really nice to see Stefano Raffaele around again. Especially on a Hawkeye story, since I have fond memories of his art on an earlier Hawkeye series he did with Fabian Nicieza. His work is brighter and cleaner here than then, but it’s no less impressive. There are some very nice panoramas and establishing shots amid strong character work throughout the book, aided by a brighter colour palette from Digikore.

Thompson and Leonardo Romero’s Hawkeye series starring Kate is easily one of my favourite books from Marvel right now, deftly mixing humour, character development, intriguing plotlines, and drop-dead gorgeous artwork and page layouts that remind me of some of the highlights from Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye, while still having its own distinct voice and purpose. This Generations one-shot is a natural extension of that, essentially being Hawkeye #9.1, or maybe #12.1 since this story is supposed to continue (kind of) in #13. This one really feels essential if you’re reading the ongoing Hawkeye series.

Quick Bits:

Black Magick #7 largely keeps the numerous plates spinning, advancing the various bits in smaller degrees. All of it brought together by some truly gorgeous art by Nicola Scott & Chiara Arena.

| Published by Image

Faith & The Future Force #2 ups the stakes a few times as Timewalker, Ank, Faith, and friends continue to travel through time to try to stop an “evil robot”. It’s still not clear exactly when the present of the series takes place (I’m guessing before Harbinger Renegade #5, but definitely after the end of the Faith ongoing series), especially since other characters are plucked out of different time frames, and we’re still not given any exposition on exactly who this evil robot is and what he’s doing other than messing with time (erasing Adolf Hitler was apparently one of the first things, eliminating the Civil War another), but it’s still entertaining to see them continually throw larger and larger groups at it with reckless abandon. It’s a fun way to “kill the Valiant universe” without actually killing the Valiant universe.

| Published by Valiant

Jean Grey #6 is the first of two X-dips into magic and the supernatural this week, with young Jean turning to Doctor Strange for help in her trip of self-discovery and preparation for the oncoming Phoenix. We also get to see which “spirit” has been dogging Jean since the first issue. Maybe. I say “maybe” because since the first issue Dennis Hopeless has largely been setting up the possibility that things might not be 100% real. And maybe Jean is just crazy. That’s unlikely, but it’s still possible.

This issue also features some excellent guest art from Paul Davidson. His depictions of the astral plane and trips through the life and times of adult Jean Grey are worth the price of the book alone. It would be nice to see him get some regular work again.

| Published by Marvel

Lady Killer 2 #5 is wow. That’s all I can really say. This is one hell of an explosive end to the series. Joëlle Jones delivers another stunning issue. Do yourself a favour and buy both this series and the first volume. You won’t be disappointed.

| Published by Dark Horse

Optimus Prime #10 gets another of IDW’s Hasbroverse titles up to speed for the First Strike “crossover” that is already underway. That several of the other titles are also still out of sync is a similar problem that Revolution had. The stories are usually very good, but shipping late and out of order ruins momentum and important story beats. Read in a vacuum, though, the individual titles are still excellent and this issue of Optimus Prime is no different.

| Published by IDW

Saban’s Go Go Power Rangers #2, like the first issue, is fun. I was never a fan of the TV shows, but have been greatly enjoying what BOOM! has been doing with the license in comics. Ryan Parrott delivers on a mix of humour, character development, and action, all while Dan Mora continues to show that he should really be one of comics’ breakout talents.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Spawn #277 continues what is shaping up to be one of the most inventive and compelling runs on the title. The team of Darragh Savage and Jason Shawn Alexander have brought an atmosphere of dread and horror to Spawn that I don’t think I’ve seen since the Hellspawn series. I’m really liking this.

| Published by Image

Spider-Gwen #23 is kind of an odd place for a Mary Janes interlude just as the Predators story-arc was hitting a critical point. It’s a decent story by guest creator, Hannah Blumenreich, but it makes me kind of hate MJ. The art is great, though.

| Published by Marvel

Star Wars: Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu #1 reminds you that you need more Denys Cowan in your life. His art here is a little more restrained than I’m used to, but it still shines throughout this first issue. There’s also some nice humour peppered throughout the script by Matt Owens that lightens the mood for this otherwise action-packed debut.

| Published by Marvel

Uncanny Avengers #26, excluding the Generations one-shots, is one of the first post-Secret Empire stories without said branding to deal with the fallout. It also gives a first step to an idea as to where Jim Zub may be going with the book as he makes it his own, bringing Scarlet Witch back into the fold for the first time since I think Rick Remender’s run, a kind of redemptive arc, but I had thought that a lot of the animosity between her and Rogue had been stitched up. Apparently not. Like the ruins of Avengers Mansion their still camping out in, it gives a sense of rebuilding for the team.

It’s also nice to see Zub reunited with one of his Thunderbolts compatriots, Sean Izaakse. I liked his art there and thought it was a shame he only did a couple of issues.

| Published by Marvel

Vampirella #6 extends Paul Cornell’s run on the series by the first of a two-issue arc. It also sees Andy Belanger of Southern Cross take over art chores, which in itself should make the comic an instant purchase. It’s an interesting trip through Vampi’s psyche personified through dream with some really, really nice artwork.

| Published by Dynamite

X-Men Blue #10 is the second of the X-dips into magic and the supernatural this week, as Beast hooks up with the Goblin Queen again. It also brings yet another alternate X-Men team to the title, since the original five and dimension-displaced, mind-wiped mutants from the Ultimate universe aren’t enough. To his credit, though, Cullen Bunn is really making this work. I’m not as keen on another rehash of the Jean/Scott romance plot, with an added Wolverine stand-in for a love triangle, for what seems like the millionth time. Bunn is very good with the characterizations, but seriously I think this plot has been done to death.

| Published by Marvel

Other Highlights: Animosity #9, Bankshot #3, Black Panther #17, Black Panther & The Crew #6, BPRD: Devil You Know #2, Crosswind #3, Deadly Class #30, Deadpool #35, Doctor Strange & The Sorcerers Supreme #11, Dungeons & Dragons: Frost Giant’s Fury #5, Ghostbusters 101 #6, GI Joe #8, The Normals #4, Paklis #4, Planetoid: Praxis #6, Rapture #4, Ringside #11, Saga #46, Star Wars #35, Thanos #10, There’s Nothing There #4, TMNT: Dimension X #5, Victor LaValle’s Destroyer #4

Recommend Collections: Archie - Vol. 4, Bullseye: Colombian Connection, Copperhead - Vol.3, Jupiter’s Legacy - Vol. 2, Magdalena: Reformation, Old Guard - Vol. 1: Opening Fire, The Other Side - Special Edition, Providence - Act 3

d. emerson eddy is unsure what he made anyone do and might like to apologize for it, maybe, but he doesn’t know what it was. Was it the slightly charred red peppers?

#This Week in Comics #Generations: The Archers #Kelly Thompson #Stefano Raffaele

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sasspotatodoesthings · 7 years

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Ranking of the Assassin’s Creed main games

A personal ranking of the main story games of the Assassin’s Creed series. I will be putting ten eleven twelve spots, as there are ten eleven twelve games (one being released soon), and I will just leave the spots open and move them around as I play the games. Please note that I strive to get 100% synchronization so any optional stuff that isn’t necessary does affect my opinion.

Updated: 12/25/2020

Warning: There is spoilers, cursing and opinions below.

12 - Assassin’s Creed: Unity - This game took the longest for me to complete. Literal years to finish. I can’t even remember when I started playing this game (I’m guessing somewhere around late 2017 or early 2018, since I finished III in 2017 and finished Rogue not too long after that) but I had about 70% already done when I picked it back up these last couple weeks and powered through it as much as possible. What really ruined the game experience was the co op missions. I’m shite at the games, so I’m not going to actually try to play with other people. Soloing each of those three times to get all the armor was a nightmare. I’d much rather play the first game again because at least its shorter than this one. The controls are a bit buggy and because the free run system changed, I definitely had a hard time adjusting to it. I didn’t have many opinions about the clothes and weapons, and I never even took much of a look at the color options. Overall game time: I actually don’t know. It doesn’t record the time in game like it has in previous games, but it records it through the Ubisoft site, and mine didn’t sync up I guess. I’m assuming it has a similar game time at Black Flag, so maybe around 60-70 hours? It’s hard to tell because I’ve been playing it off and on for like 2-ish years with loooong breaks in between.

11 - Assassin’s Creed - Fuck this game and its monotonous game play. Fuck its collectibles and not being able to ride horses ANYWHERE. Couldn’t ride my horse in the open fuckin fields or I’d get chased by guards. God dammit I hate this game so much. I hated it so much, I had to take a year break halfway through the game. I hated it that much. Altair is the blandest character in this series and yet they don’t let go of him until Revelations. Even then, there’s still some stuff about him in later games. Altair was a boring character and I didn’t want to hear about him after this game. Overall game time: I don’t fucking know because I can’t find where it would be listed but this game sucks anyway so fuck it. Who cares?

10 - Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey - (This is gonna be long, sorry not sorry.) I played as Kassandra! This game is just a complete monster all on it’s own. I actually made a bullet point list about the things to mention here and I haven’t done that for any of the other games. Major talking points about this game. It’s just too big. The map is too big; there are too many weird, small locations to visit; there are too many tiny fetch quests, too many kill quests. I miss when there was a map with like, maybe 20-40 extra places to visit and some side quests. Most of this game is filler, if you’re trying to 100%. And because the world is just so large, the fast travel points don’t actually help. I could have a quest point that is a minimum of 500m from any kind of fast travel point. That’s not really any help. Along with the large map, some exploratory areas are just too big. The forts are a regularly occurring type of location in the game. These tend to be huge with something like 20-40 bad guys in them. Every time I happened to come upon these, I would groan, save, and then slug through it. Of course, when you have that many baddies, you think it should be easy. But no, it’s just another tedious task because instant assassination is no more! If you happen to do enough damage or the baddie is a low enough level, you can instant assassinate. But if they’re an elite or brute, you’re out of luck. Another major downer for people is the general rpg-like feel of this game. Origins, I think anyway, handled the rpg element much better than Odyssey. Origins gave you an established character, Bayek, and you did not get to change his character in any way. You play as Bayek. Odyssey, however, gives you dialogue and moral choices. They try to give you a half established character and then you take over from there. So you can either try to make decisions you think would align with Kassandra/Alexios, or you can make decisions on your usual play through of an rpg. This was definitely a bad way to handle this game. I think it would’ve been much better if they had given us little to no dialogue/moral choices. Like, for example, for one of the Tales from Greece DLC quests, you help find Barnabas’ daughter. You try to convince her to leave her mother’s farm to join you on your ship with Barnabas. She declines, which is reasonable as she wants to care for her family farm. Weeelllll, with out any kind of input from me, Kassandra burns down the farm and tries to play it off as helping the daughter in the end. I was horrified that the game just did that for me without at least giving me the choice. And these aren’t the only kind of choices that suck. The romance options! They are all basically one time flings that you seduce with a few flirty sentences (what is this, the Sims?) and then they most likely will join your ship. Now it was amusing at first to bang anyone who would let me, but then it got a bit frustrating. Why couldn’t I have a solid relationship? I just wanted to pick someone and date them the whole time and have cute scenes together. Why are they so many women romance options and little men options? I mean, I am a straight woman, but I will romance who I want in games because fuck it, am I right? And the one male romance option I did genuinely enjoy was a bit of a let down, cause it was between two brothers. See, I helped two brothers and I noticed a could romance them both. Now, dummy me I guess, romanced them both and then hoped maybe a little menage a trois would happen. Nooooooo, I couldn’t have both at once, and because I had slept with both of them before at separate times, I couldn’t even get to choose one later! Let me have the threesome cowards. You put statues with dicks everywhere and let me sleep with almost anyone. Give me the threesome. Also, about romancing anyone, did you know you can romance the leader of the big bad at the end of the game?? I sure didn’t until I got to that point. I did it for the shits and giggles but really what reasoning is there behind it? She’s someone who you previously trusted and was previously betrayed by. You never show ANY romantic interest in her before the very end of the game. Like it doesn’t make any sense for them to smooch. Talking about the cult, why are they sooo boring? Except for the few that are integral to the main story line, all the side cult member are boring looking and don’t have interesting reasons for being in the cult. The Order members from Origins were 100x more interesting. They had reasons for being part of The Order. They had interesting character designs. I just wish the cult members had been more like the members in Origins. Uh let’s see more points to hate on the game. I have no idea if this was a problem for other people, but fairly often, characters dialogue would overlap. It didn’t bother me much, as around 100 hrs I started skimming and skipping dialogue. I know this was definitely a problem for others: my game kept freezing and crashing. Comparing my last save time and my time on the Uplay site, I lost about 2 hrs and 20-ish minutes from freezing and crashing. The armor is this game is either subpar or down right ugly. I liked the armor upgrade system in Origins because the armor naturally fit with Bayek and his setting. Where as Kassandra could be running around in Athens wearing Spartan armor because the was made me the most powerful at the time. Now, I realized super late into the game that you could basically change the outlook of your armor to look like any piece you had looted to that point. But, like, why even have the ugly armor to begin with? Ships are a thing. Almost like Black Flag ships, but not quite as good. I’m not sure why they didn’t just recycle the ship system from Black Flag, but they didn’t. The ships feel so much slower and clunkier, and the upgrades start feeling like they do nothing when you get into the higher ones. And in certain parts of the sea, it’s crawling with pirates that aggro you almost immediately. I just wanted to get to that island that was like 1000m away, but I guess I have to battle some pirate ships now. And to finish off for the main game: Layla sucks major ass and I hate her as the modern day protagonist. So, my parents happened to have bought the seasons pass version of Odyssey when they got it for me for Christmas, so that means I got the play some AC DLC for the first time ever! Wooooooo.... yeah I wish this wasn’t the first game I played the DLC for. I’m gonna talk about the Fate of Atlantis DLC first. I didn’t really enjoy this DLC. It starts off with a disturbing scene of Alexios/Kassandra/Deimos torturing a man for information. It made me uncomfortable. I can handle most stuff that make people squeamish, but this one got me, boys. Elysium, which is basically heaven, is very pretty realm and pleases my aesthetic. But, the Isu guards there drain my adrenaline and I am a very heavy user the the adrenaline. About the prettiness of Elysium, Odyssey can be very beautiful. I never did take pictures in Origins, but I did once for funsies in Odyssey, and then I just kept taking more when I thought the scenery was pretty enough. I am pretty proud of some of the photos I took. It’s not much, but one of my pictures got 27 likes! Now back to the Isu! I absolutely adore that fact that all the Isu are taller than Kassandra. Most often, Kassndra is taller than everyone, excepting elites and brutes. But all the Isu were taller than Kassandra and that made me want to fuck them. Ubisoft, stop being cowards and let me fuck the gods, especially Hades because he gives me big MCU Loki vibes and I wanted that, so bad. To get away from fucking Isu gods, Ros, a dog later to be revealed as Cerberus, is Persephone’s dog that wanders around Elysium and I was always delighted to find him hanging out somewhere. I’m pretty sure I even took a “selfie” with him, as much as you can take a selfie in this game. Persephone gave me a real hard moral choice that I did not enjoy making. She made me choose between my grandfather, or a spy I previously helped infiltrate her own army. I did not like making any choice at all. If I could have, I would’ve just booked it and never looked back. I don’t really have much to say about the Underworld. It’s hell. I wanted to fuck Hades bad. That’s about it. I don’t have much to say about Atlantis either exCEPT HOLY SHIT THE FINAL BOSS IS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE I WAS FREAKING OUT THE WHOLE TIME HOLY SHIT. Ahem- anyway the boss was scary and I was having a mental crisis trying to beat it without actually dying in real life from fright. Fate of Atlantis DLC done, woohoo! I don’t have much thought for The Hidden Blade DLC. It was short and sweet. I didn’t mind getting locked into a straight romance and having a child. I’m a straight woman and if a game gives me the choice to marry, have a child, and still be an adventurer, I’m gonna do it. Finished basically all of it in a day and that finished off the whole game. Boy was it a relief to finally beat everything. Overall game time: 133 hours and 45 minutes to beat the main game with one part of The Hidden Blade DLC done, and 167 hours and 55 minutes to beat the DLC, excluding the one part from The Hidden Blade DLC. Now if you count all the time I lost from crashing, it’s 170 hours and 16 minutes.

9 - Assassin’s Creed: Revelations - By this point, I’ve played three of the games in a row and I was very tired of playing Ezio. It doesn’t help that this game is basically II and Brotherhood but with smaller features added. Also, the colors you could dye your clothes SUCKED. Overall game time: 22 hours and 25 minutes. It felt longer than that and I was surprised to see this was the shortest time so far. Thank god though because I did not like this game.

7 - Assassin’s Creed III - Writing this as the credits role. So, heads up, I’ve played this game before so I knew some things that were going to happen, but I forgot most of the game. I’ve read that a lot of people hate this game and I can see why, especially if it’s the first game you play of this series. The game changes quite a bit from the previous games. It has a new free run system, the running is a little more fluid, new weapons, new side missions, etc. I’m giving III a huge bonus for changing the old system in the hopes of something better... it’s not completely better, but better none the less. The downside to all these new things is that they are buggy as hell. The running can be amusing sometimes, but it is a horrible experience if you need to catch someone or stay within a certain distance. The side missions are also super buggy. Many times the icons do not appear on the map (and they tend to be in the areas that the viewpoints do not open up) and just seem not to work entirely right. Currently for one of the delivery requests, I have all the items and I can find the guy I need to turn them into, but can not talk to him for whatever reason. (If you know how to fix this, please tell me because every method I’ve tried hasn’t worked). This may be fixed after the credits, but I think I’m going to have to live with 99% synch and move on to Rogue. To bring up the viewpoint thing again, the viewpoints do not cover the whole map and you manually have to clear up parts of the map, which sucks. Thank god they didn’t do that again. Moving on from game play points, I’ve seen a lot of hate for Connor, which I personally don’t understand. I don’t love Connor, but I like his stoic character who showed moments of true kindness and sadness with friends and family. This review is getting to long now so I’ll just stop here and add more once I complete the game as much as I can. Also, fuck any of the naval stuff. Complete bullshit. Overall game time: First time (2013?) 41 hours and 55 minutes. Second time (2017) 38 hours and 33 minutes.

6 - Assassin’s Creed: Rogue - Well. It took me forever to finish this game, mostly because you can only play so much of the same game. So this game was nice. All of it’s little connections to III, IV and Unity is fun to see and connect the dots. Seeing Shay ultimately shaping what Unity will be was such a great thing to me. This game was such a breath of fresh air. I was sort of dreading having to do anything with ships since III is a disaster and IV had its mistakes, but I was pleasantly surprised. Except for a few ship related missions, you can almost completely avoid sailing. Of course I didn’t because I need to 100% this game. Still pissed I technically didn’t 100% III because of a god damn glitch. Naval related stuff overall was much easier than previous games, including the legendary battles. I took out the first three legendary ships in one try and took down the fourth one on my second try. I had actually planned to use a whole day to beat the legendary ships but I very happy I didn’t have to do that. The game itself is very short, with only six sequences that hold anywhere between two to five memories. That’s the shortest a game has ever been in this series. But they pad the game with millions of locations to explore and millions of collectibles to get. Even though over half of my time spent playing this game was getting collectibles, it was fun. One thing I really enjoyed was Shay’s outfits. This is the first game where I like almost all of the main character’s outfit options. I particularly enjoyed the arctic explorer outfit. I also really liked the Templar outfit you got after defeating the epic legendary ship. This was a good game and in the future, I could consider playing it again, along with II. Overall game time: 31 hours and 55 minutes.

5 - Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood - It wasn’t a super bad game, but it was basically II with some new things and now you’re only stuck in one place. Also guild challenges. Fuck those guild challenges. ALSO. There’s that mission where you get the apple and can lay waste to the guards in your way, but it uses your health to harm them... and the optional objective is don’t lose any health. Fuck you Ubisoft. Or the mission where you destroy Leonardo’s war machines. Those sucked. The only good thing about this game is the colors you can dye your clothes. Those. Those are good. Overall game time: 35 hours and 3 minutes.

4 - Assassin’s Creed: Origins - Took me about a month and a half to complete this game. It’s very different from the previous game titles and I can definitely see why some people wouldn’t like it. I went into it knowing it would be different and I genuinely enjoyed the game. Just as a heads up, I’ve only got 97% synchronization and I’m not totally sure what will get me to 100%. There’s no definitive list of what to do to 100% the game. I’ve read from some people that you need to do all the hippodrome races and arena fights, and I’ve read from others that you don’t. I’m not going to do the races because they’re garbage and not fun. I’ve finished one of the arena’s fights and I just don’t really want to do the other so I think I’m fine sitting at 97%. Now, this game is very different from previous games. Origins is more like an rpg, but not really. There is like, a bunch more exploration areas. Maybe somewhere between 150-300? I’m bad at estimating but it is a lot. There are side quests too. There wasn’t many side quests in previous games, but including the main quests with the side quests, I did a total of 129 quests. There is a lot of gameplay and exploration. Not much of a challenge, though. If you don’t select the auto-level enemies to your level, you reach a point where you’re about 5-10 levels above the area you’re in because all the landmarks and side quests give you xp. At that point, many enemies are 1-3 shots depending on your weapon loadout. There are a couple of locations early in the game that for some reason have higher level enemies than the area calls for. For example, in Alexandria, you should be around level 12-16. Enemies will be around that same level range. Except, there is one location in the middle of Alexandria that has about 5-6 enemies that are above level 20. Now, it’s easy enough to just come back later when you are also that level, but when I was exploring the area, I had no idea they’d be that level and immediately got killed because my weapons did nothing to them. So that wasn’t fun. The game has couple more “challenging” locations if you do them at the right level. Similar to Black Flag and Rogue, Origins has some legendary battles. This time it’s elephants. The are four different elephants, and one them is actually two, like the ship battles from Black Flag and Rogue. The first couple were a bit of a challenge for me because I wasn’t the cap level and I didn’t have a strategy figured out yet. I saved the double elephants for last because I thought they’d be super hard like the double ship battle from Black Flag. However, before I fought them, I reached the level cap, upgraded my best legendary weapons, had a strategy, and also got multiple level points in skills that would boost my bow and arrow and sword damage. The double elephants actually ended up being the easiest at that point. One thing, though, was around 40-ish hours in, my game randomly lost about 7-8 hours of progress. I lost about 3 large map areas of exploration, 6 levels and 10-20 quests. It made me pretty angry and it took me a few extra days to get back to where I was before lost the progress. Aaannyyywaaayy, enough about that. Bayek is a nice character to play as. He is a serious, dedicated, loving man who can have moments of humor. I loved his relationship with his wife Aya, and I was sad to see them mutually decide to break up at the end of the game. They clearly still cared for each other even after deciding that their paths were not going the same way. Sometimes I would have a very similar mind set as Bayek and it would be pretty funny when I would make a comment and then a couple moments later he’d say something along the same line. And, of course, it was interesting to see the origin stories of The Creed of the Assassin’s. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually play this game again but I enjoyed my experience with it. Overall game time: 82 hours and 22 minutes counting the extra time that I had to make up for lost progress and 75 hours not counting the hours I got from making up the lost progress.

3 - Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate - So it’s been about five months since I finished Unity, and I actually beat this game like maybe a week before updating this. I think it’s because the game didn’t have any credits for me? I don’t know why I didn’t have credits, but I just didn’t. Anyway, wow, what a breath of fresh air, after the nightmare that was Unity. This game takes some elements I wasn’t too fond of in the previous game and improves them greatly. The fighting style of wailing on enemies until you get upgrades to one shot is easier to handle. It also looks way more fun. Evie and Jacob just move so fast when they’re throwing punches and shooting people, it doesn’t feel like I’m taking all that long to kill the baddies. The associate quests were fun and simple, they didn’t require much thought or effort. The main game was also on the simpler side compared to previous installments of this game series. Jacob and Evie were fun characters, I never really got tired of them. The main sequence memories were mostly on the short side, so the game felt like it passed in no time. The only long part was getting all the collectibles, which is unavoidable to 100% the game. All the upgrades and weapon choices were fun to choose from, and it was always cool to get a new weapon that drastically did more damage. Having a gang that slowly got better as I upgraded them, and that would back me up in fights was also super fun. There really isn’t anything that should change from this game. If I changed something, it’d probably be the romance between Evie and Henry Green, also named Jayadeep Mir. It felt kind of forced, and really, romances are always boring in Assassin’s Creed. Anyway, fun game, might play again one day. Overall game time: 37 hours and 37 minutes.

2 - Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag - It’s been a couple years since I’ve played this game, so it’s very possible this will bounce around in my list as I play the later games, but I remember enjoying a good part of the game. It was nice to have some variety, especially in the form of PIRATES. Some of my favorite parts were sailing to no where specific and singing shanties with my crew in my suped-up ship. Which brings me to the bad parts of the game; the ship missions. Honestly hated any story/side mission that involved my ship, especially if I had to be sneaky. I’m in a giant ass ship trying to remain in this circle filled with other giant ass ships looking for me. So yeah, fuck that part of the game. But even though it’s been awhile, I remember enjoying this game. Overall game time: 66 hours and 50 minutes.

1 - Assassin’s Creed II - Thank the gods for this game. This is a good goddamn game. Ezio is a fresh breath of air after Altair and being in Italy is honestly great. Upgrading the villa he lives in is great. Leonardo is great. Venice and it’s carnival is great. Only thing that sucked was the Ezio didn’t kill the goddamn Spaniard and then has to chase after him and his offspring in the next game. All in all, my favorite game so far. Overall game time: 28 hours and 37 minutes.

So the game(s) I need to play:

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

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ptw30 · 7 years

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5 Favorite Moments from VLD Season 2 + 1 Favorite Moment from Season 1

VLD Season 2 was spectacular. I cannot express how much I enjoyed it, but I’m still going to try by recounting my top five moments from this season. And seriously – these were really, really hard to choose, so they are in episode order.

From Episode 1 – Across the Universe – “It takes more than a glowing alien wound, a fall from the upper atmosphere, and crashing into a hard pan surface, at what I’m guessing is about 25 meters per second squared, to get rid of me. How are you?”

I cannot tell you how much I loved this clip when it was originally released, and I pretty much could snapshot any of the Shiro/Keith dialogue in “Across the Universe” and say it was my favorite part of the season. The best part of this exchange is seeing the different way Shiro and Keith interact with each other than with the rest of the team. Shiro definitely takes a more commanding demeanor around the others, but with Keith – there’s none of that pretense. This is his “little brother,” and he doesn’t hesitate to rely upon Keith, more so than he does the others. He is self-depreciating and feels guilty for bringing Keith into this life-and-death situation, but Keith reciprocates, comforting Shiro and assuring him that Shiro has had a positive effect on his life. And this proves, in my mind, that Shiro and Keith are the lucky ones of the team. Unlike Pidge, who has lost her brother and father, Shiro and Keith have each other – which makes the end of the season so much more heartbreaking.

From Episode 8 – The Blade of Marmora – “And, at this moment, your friend desperately wants to see you.”

Keith is seeking answers about his past. He’s fighting to find out where he came from and what he is, and throughout it all, he’s not thinking about his father or his unknown mother, whom he’s trying to find. Ironically, he’s thinking of Shiro. Shiro represents his greatest hope and fear. In fact, when Shiro is walking away, Keith glances down at his blade and then calls out to Shiro and runs after him. One can assume that at that moment, between finding out the truth about his past and keeping Shiro in his life – Keith chooses Shiro. But we learn this for certain later when Keith still refuses to give up the blade, demanding to know what Kolivan means when he says that Keith failed to awaken it – until Shiro attacks the Blade of Marmora. It’s only then – when Shiro is in danger – that Keith finally gives it up, forfeiting his past for a present/future with Shiro and the paladins. (Of course, we know the blade transforms, so he gets to keep Shiro and the paladins, as well his connection to the past.)

From Episode 9 – The Belly of a Weblum – The Hug™

So many times in stories, especially in these life and death scenarios, a simple hug, one of the most demonstrative actions, is forgotten. The number one example I can think of this is Captain America: Civil War, where Cap and Bucky have not seen each other in decades, and they never hug. They have one conversation about their time before the present, and that’s it.

That’s why I love this little scene in VLD Season 2. (Thank you, VLD EPs!) It takes less than ten seconds (I know because I keep hitting then ten-second rewind button on Netflix), but you see Shiro and Keith’s affection for each other. (Did you see Keith’s tender smile? Did you see it! *squeal*) And they just come together so naturally that you can tell they’ve done this before. (I’m guessing at least before the Kerberos mission.) While it makes me want to learn more about their past – how Keith and Shiro met, and what they were like at the garrison – this scene is just one of many that proves the depth of Shiro and Keith’s bond.

Though there were so many moments that made season 2 exceptional, this scene made it for me. It is just perfection, and its placement, too, is important. It comes AFTER we find out that Keith is Galra, proving that Shiro’s level of affection for Keith remains unchanged after he discovered Keith’s Galra heritage.

From Episode 12 – Best Laid Plans – “Keith.” Pause.

After Keith volunteers to sneak onto Zarkon’s ship, he meets resistance from the head of the Blade of Marmora. It’s Shiro who eventually concedes that Keith must be the one to sneak upon the ship – and he does concede. Shiro orders Pidge to modify the pod with the cloaking device, and when Shiro addresses Keith, he pauses, as if contemplating any last-minute options and loathing the result. The only other person who could ideally get onto the ship and interact with the technology is Shiro himself, with his Galra arm, but unfortunately, as the bait, he has no choice but to allow/support Keith in his decision to get on the ship. And ultimately, he knows Keith will do it against his wishes and won’t stop until he completes the mission. But there’s hesitation there, a moment of fear; even after all the missions they’ve completed, Shiro still hates sending his little brother into such a dangerous mission.

(Along the same vein and a runner-up to this point – Shiro takes a completely different tone with Keith during “Blackout” when he asks the paladins to fight with him after Voltron is rendered powerless by the Komar Experiment. When he gets to Keith, there’s a tenderness in Shiro’s voice that he doesn’t have with the others.)

From Episode 13 – Blackout – The Entire Black Bayard Sequence

I know this is more than one moment, but from the time Shiro awakens to Pidge’s yell, “Keep Zarkon away from the Black Lion!” to Zarkon’s final explosion, is intense and epic. The Black Lion tells Shiro to go for the bayard, and the flashbacks as Shiro races toward Zarkon, the Black Lion and he so in sync that the Black Lion grows angelic wings, and Shiro’s passage through the astral plane to grab Zarkon’s bayard – excuse me, his bayard (thank you, Keith) – the entire scene is a perfect end to Shiro’s arc. He and Black Lion have finally deepened their bond until Shiro overtakes Zarkon to be the true Black Paladin, complete with his bayard, and now Voltron has the power to defeat their greatest enemy. The story that began in the very first episode – with Shiro’s missing bayard – finally culminates in a satisfying conclusion that left me genuinely smiling.

(On a side note – it takes Shiro an entire season to win the complete and utter trust of the Black Lion – and Keith is supposed to do it next season, too?)

+1 - Favorite Scene from Season 1 – “This is my chance to put an end to the Galra Empire. I have to take it!”

Originally, there was speculation about why Keith hated the Galra Empire so intensely. Was it because he was Galra and escaped its evil clutches? Did he still have family in the empire? Was Keith a reimagined version of Lotor…?

Nope. After seeing the deep and profound bond Shiro and Keith share – and that Keith’s greatest fear is Shiro leaving him – there’s no doubt that Keith hates the Galra Empire because it took Shiro from him.

Thank you, VLD Creators, for an epic season 2. I cannot wait to see what you have in store for us in Season 3!

(Another side note – 21 Things I Wish to See in Season 3)

#vld season 2 #voltron: legendary defender #Voltron #Shiro #Keith #bromances in space #takashi shirogane #Lists #we want vld season 3 #netflix #dreamworks #vld random thoughts

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raguna-blade · 4 years

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Revolutionary Girl Utena 13-15

I’ll give overall thoughts like...later. Tomorrow. or whatever. God.

God.

Episode 13

Just realized in the intro that Anthy and Utena are not spinning in sync. Almost in sync, but not quite.

Can't believe I didn't think about this before, but Juri is also something of a Ditto fighter. Not quite as blatant as Touga sis, but kinda.

...The...The Recap of the Thesis again? Wait are the colors of the roses different?

What shit is about to happen oh god.

WAS IT SUCH A GOOD IDEA?

Shadow Girls immediately? UFO?

...Is..Is toga listening to a recording of himself?

Egg time but uh... Uh this feels way fucked up.

WHO THE FUCK IS THIS

Dios...?

Also, seven trials? Self Duel? What?

Friendship 1 (saionji)

Self 7 (Touga)

Slap on Beat. It is a thing. No way this is on accident. CONFIRMED

Also, Saionji actually had reads on Utena? Uh...Not sure how to feel about this.

Never Lose the Strength and Nobility even when grown.

Also, Anthy was legit shocked this first duel huh? First awakened and all but...Huh.

That really was just a soul crush there though damn.

Choice 2 ( Saionji)

Keep fighting the duels? Yeah man.

THIS CLIPS EP THOUGH. Can't even have just a cheap review of things without it doing something huh.

It just occurred, but do any of them know WHY they do the sword drawing thing with Anthy?

...Are these slaps gonna stay on beat? Can...Can we not?

Choice breaks the seal on Dios power? Not just friendship, but choice? Choice made by friendship? Hm

Reason 3 (Miki)

The need of the bride thing still remains weird and unexplained yet.

Toga taking things away and uh...being on the bed like that is...Not painting a great image

...Wait, is the Rose Mosaic supposed to be a violation thing?

Love 4 (Juri)

Wait, Revolution is impossible because they lost hope? Wait wait wait what?

Also, with this being full blood light imagery, these night darkness gods, some shit went down here didn't it.

Gynous?

Certainty of Death Namely Light. Absolute Destiny Apocalypse? Huh....

These...Inside i'm hollow.

Adoration 5 (Nanami)

Also, just realized, Sword with Power turned pink. So...Is pink the power color here?

Increasingly sure that the rose mosaic is doing SOMETHING. And that these songs are well

Conviction 6 (Touga)

Wait...She cleared Seven duels?

uh...Black roses huh.

Uh yeah where were you anthy?

Not ominous clouds at all.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE SHADOW GIRLS

...Oh that's ominous.

HOW DOES HE NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS DUEL SHIT

WHO ARE THESE DUDES

WHOS THIS GENDER BEND UTENA AND ANTHY?

Episode 14

...Going Down?

Anthy Genderbend?

Utena Genderbend?

….Darkness absorbing rose...Uh...UHHHHH

Utena Elevator Action? Uh...?

Regular action on Saturdays for Anthy? Huh.

Exploring.

Her Big Brother. Explaaining this..Now...? OK

….What the fuck. The Chairmans house? Literla Planeterium

Akio what the fuck. I mean your room your rules.

Akane...marrying.

SHES IN HIGHSCHOOL

SHES IN HIGHSCHOOL AKIO WAIT A FUCKING SECOND

….No I do not like this.

NEVER BAD HERE HUH THATS A BALD FACED LIE

HELD THAT SILENCE FOR A FEEW SECONDS JESUS

How is Anthy the most brutal character this series with like the LEAST dialogue. Everything is a murder. Hot Fire Only.

Is that Akio on his desk or his bud?

Shadow Seminar. Mikage Seminar. This is uh..Ominous.

Recruiting Miki...?

So it's a secret...?

….100 people buried.

...Making boya as bride...? So it's not...Gendered? What.

So they're collecting strong duelists?

Kanae Ohtori so, keep an eye on her.

Not ominous the pointing at all.

What's with this...anti elevator.

Ok, so Akio is 10000000000000000000% a fucking predator right? We're not gonna get a reveal he's not. This isn't supposed to be a secret right?

What's with the butterflies?

Kanae recognizes Anthy's Weirdness. She just wants anthy to be her friend and nope.

Only choice is to revolutionize the world and...THIS SHITS HORRIFYING.

That's just a corpse?

Wait, they turn black when they die?

Can't escape.

Oh no is he YEP STABBING HER IN THE CHEST

THIS EPISODE IS SO UNCOMFORTABLE

WAKABA NO

WAKABA NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU SHADOWS GIRLS NEW SHADOWD GIRLS

NEW DESTINY APOCALYPES MIX?HEY WAIT A SECOND THAT LOOKED DIFFERENT?

Am I shadow Jumping? Can't be sure.

But...Is utena about to kill this girl? That's what this feels like it's going to.

….Oh that's ominous. Flowers on desk are death things right?

….Another Utena Ditto?

Ok, but...How...?

SO MANY DEAD STUDENTS

Murder Anthy?

So wait, did she invoke dios on purpose there?

Ring Broke. Sword Broke. And...she's on the floor dead....?just. Hot DROPPED INTO THE INFERNO?

Freezing the heart of a girl?

Anthy is cool with murder I guess?

I DO NOT BELIEVE SHES FINE AT ALL ANTHY

UNCANNY ANTHY

Chuchu doesn't like Akio it seems.

NOPE

NOOOOOOOO GOD DAMNIT NO

AKIO WHAT THE FUCK

GODDAMNIT021

Episode 15

Ok, before this gets weird, Is there a SINGLE brother sister group that's not weirdly incestuous? Miki? Please no. Don't do this.

Kozue what are you even doing.

Jesus god Every adult is MAD SUSPECT IN THIS SETTING.

Literally the only adult who seems legit is the hall monitor lady.

Touga in his depression room.

Nanami doing her best.

Also, confirmed, Heart to Heart.

Ok, so Purple Hair Dark skin dudes and...Anyone I guess Are all on the mad suspect frame right now.

MIKI IS A GOOD BOY. PLEASE REMAIN WHOLESOME I BEG YOU.

He's trying so hard and anthy is so fucking scary.

...Does Chuchu only stick around where anthy is cool...? Calm I mean.

YEAH UTENA CHEER THE BOY ON! HES A SWEETHEART.

Uh...what's with the running? From...Kozue?

...Did Kozue merc someone?

Who Hurt Her bro. Ok. Seems...

oh, that's hate alright.

Oh god. The hellavator. No no please no.

Student Council! Nanami, Being the hero

we need...And they changed the speech. It seems...more hopeful.

PLEASE LEAVE UTENA. JUST GET OUT OF THERE

Please. Please just one sibling relationship that's not vaguely incestuous....Why the focus on the mlikshake.

Anthy: This literally is so goddamn wholesome compared to my bullshit so you know what weird.

INTERVIEW TIME GOD THE MUSIC

Kozue, intentionally doing shit to make bro mad to make him look at me.

This is WAY less concerning than last time but also

...Am I gonna have to start watching where those roses pop up? Cause...hm.

Black Ring Kozue.

PLEASE STOP TOUCHING HIM LIKE THAT

DAMNIT

Wait, did...it

DID IT TURN MIKI INTO A ROSE BRIDE THING?

SHADOW GIRLS YOU CAN'T SAVE THE MOOD NOW

What are you even...

Why does the Staircase theme sound LESS melancholy, but more ominous? How the hell do you pull that off.

just realized that the pauldrons on utena and Anthy's outfits have shown up on others and...i'm not sure how to take that.

….Vases on the tables? Milkshakes.

Time Machine. Finally a song I can get on first run.

Anthy is taking the threats on her life pretty well.

...Did she drink all those milkshakes.

Utena with the sick flips

Which actually seem to be her thing, she's stealing dio's thing.

Another one bites the dust.

And Miki wakes up after her heart(???) is broken.

And she remembers nothing.

Moon thing. Look at it,

Squeak Squeak. NOPE NO GODDAMNIT NO.

#revolutionary girl utena #liveblog #Episode 14 was fucking harrowing #Black Rose Arc Said Its Go Time CHOOCHOOTRAUMATIME

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tbogost · 6 years

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REVIEW: The Technomancer

Published June 28, 2016, on ICXM.net

When I first started playing The Technomancer, I was struck by how it reminded me of other literature, movies and games that I had already experienced before. Weaving in and out of the fast-paced combat like I did with Geralt in The Witcher 3, navigating through menus and searching for loot similar to BioWare gems Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect, and exploring the sands of Mars in a complex world evocative of Frank Herbert’s Dune all brought back good memories. The Technomancer manages to echo each of these masterpieces while also creating its own unique atmosphere and setting. Although plenty of quirks and a few pacing issues make it less than perfect, The Technomancer is a great old-school role-playing game that any fan of the genre will enjoy immensely.

You play as Zachariah Mancer, a young man who at the start of the game is undergoing the final steps of a rite of passage which will allow him to become a true brother of the Technomancers, pious and wise warriors with cybernetic implants that grant them electrical powers. Your final test sees you learning the secret origin story of the Technomancers along with their aspiration for the future, which will set in motion an adventure throughout all of Mars itself.

The story begins quite complex as you’re almost instantly thrown into a world full of tense situations between two governments fighting over water, the scarcest resource on the planet, rogue gangs searching for power by means of intimidation and coercion, mutants terribly altered by the effects of the sun and hated by ordinary humans, plenty of alien creatures, and of course, the Technomancers. The lack of in-depth exposition at the beginning of the campaign makes it hard to follow along with everyone’s motives at first, especially when the game claims that a karma system is constantly affecting your relations with each of these groups, but things become more clear, even fascinating, after a few hours playing. I enjoyed the story almost the entire time, and felt that it only truly faltered towards the middle of the game when I was forced to spend several hours running errands for an uninteresting ruler of a foreign city for no particular reason or purpose.

Although the cutscenes suffer from some lighting errors and dreadful lip syncing, they occur rarely, and are not that important to a game like The Technomancer anyway. I never observed any performance issues outside of the cutscenes, and the writing, voice acting, and environments are great throughout.

The game is not technically open-world, but rather takes place in several different hub areas across Mars. You gain access to more regions as you progress in the story and are eventually able to fast travel between some of them, but still need to trek across massive amounts of space often. One of my favorite games, Knights of the Old Republic, takes you from location to location in a linear pattern; after completing the missions on one planet it was likely that you would never return there. In The Technomancer however, it is essential to backtrack to locations that you’ve already visited over and over again in order to complete side missions and main missions, especially during the middle portion of the game. This takes away from a lot of the fun and is far more tedious errand-work than I’ve experienced in other role-playing titles. Furthermore, enemies constantly respawn in these places and cannot be avoided, so you may find yourself anxiously dreading combat encounters while already spending unnecessary amounts of time running through the multiple hubs just to reach an objective marker at a final destination. After that, guess what? You’ve got to fight your way out all over again.

Yet this isn’t at all to say that I didn’t enjoy exploration in The Technomancer. Although travelling is monotonous, observation is engaging. Every hub area is distinct. The underground city Opis is dank and ominous, with tension between soldiers and gangs always present and a steady, electric soundtrack keeping things suspenseful. Other regions are extremely colorful, with beautiful lighting and contrasting styles of electronic music creating an entirely new sense of wonder. I enjoyed taking in each of these atmospheres and going out hunting for crates of gear or side missions the first three or four times through, just not when I was forced to return more times than is reasonable. It’s silly that you cannot set custom waypoints, but holding the right trigger brings up a slightly opaque thumbnail of the map, which I found handy as I traversed the environment.

Combat may seem unfair at the start of the game, (I had to play the first few hours on easy difficulty before ramping up to normal) but once you get used to the controls and learn the techniques required for success, it becomes enjoyable. By holding the right bumper and pressing X, Y or B while fighting, you switch between three stances: warrior, rogue, and guardian. Warrior wields a staff and is focused on strong area attacks, rogue uses a gun and dagger and is based on agility and critical hit damage, and guardian has you flourishing a mace and shield and is centered on health and defense.

Most games would force you to pick a single playstyle at the start of the game, but Technomancer encourages you to switch between all three styles mid-fight, although it does take some practice remembering which keys bind to which stances and what situations are best-suited to each. In addition to physical fighting you can also employ your Technomancer powers at any time, shooting enemies with beams of electricity or stunning them with high-powered punches packed with voltage, just to name a couple options.

All four methods of combat have their own intricate skill trees, and while it takes ages to max out multiple trees, it is doable. Every three levels you get access to additional traits as well which affect your physical and intellectual capabilities. These grant you passive bonuses such as the ability to craft more complex upgrades for your weapons or to convince computer-controlled companions to follow your commands.

Combat itself is most unique because of the disruption mechanic. Weapons and skills have various stats associated with them: increase damage, critical hit chance, chance to poison and more, one of which includes the chance to disrupt enemy attacks. Since there isn’t a symbol to point out that an enemy is about to strike and should be avoided like in, say, the Batman: Arkham games, it’s up to you to watch each of your enemies’ movements and to time your attacks proficiently. If you manage to disrupt an enemy, knocking them off balance or stunning them, you’ll have a major advantage and will be able to inflict loads of damage in the short seconds before they comes back to their senses.

Sometimes the game will go into slow-motion for a split-second as you or an enemy begins to carry out an attack. During this short time period you have the option to either continue with your current plan or to execute a different tactic entirely. Not only does this feature allow for last-minute changes to your battle strategy, but it also looks neat visually, and the animation is so brief that it never slows down the pace of the brawl.

You come across plenty of different companions during your adventure in The Technomancer, each of whom assists in battle and offers insight and advice about the world, including judging the morality of your actions. You share equipment with companions, so it’s important to manage your inventory rationally in order to make sure everyone has optimal gear. I enjoyed the company of my allies and the ability to switch between any two of them for slightly varied fights and passive boosts.

Unfortunately, I ran into several issues that should not be present in any game. For example, I once asked a character if he had ever been to a location called [i]“The Underworks”[/i] before as we stood directly inside of it. He replied in past tense, describing in great detail the time when he had been to The Underworks long ago and what it looked like. It was an odd conversation that clearly wasn’t thought out very well and that I didn’t expect to come across in an otherwise cohesively written game. While experiences similar to this one are not common throughout the game, they are present in several places.

Another problem is embedded in the karma system, which affects how your companions and other characters respond to your actions throughout the world. Although I appreciate the changes in dialogue proportional to your endeavors both good and bad, I never felt like my actions had a major impact on the world as a whole, and if they did, the game didn’t do a good job of illustrating that. I found myself questioning the purpose of the karma system often and wondering whether it was a necessary addition. Sometimes it isn’t even logical. At one point I lied to a character, telling him that I had successfully completed a task he had previously assigned me. My lie seemed to go off unnoticed; I was applauded for a job well done. Nevertheless, a notification warned me that my relationship with said character had declined a significant amount. So which was it? Did he actually appreciate what I had done? Did he know that I abandoned his orders yet pretended otherwise? Occasions like this aren’t immersive, but plain frustrating. I want to know why my decisions matter and what incidents they lead to. The karma system doesn’t appear to be central to The Technomancer, but it’s hinted at enough that I think it could have been improved upon much more.

Summary

The Technomancer is a very solid game that seems to be almost a mixture of an old-school role-playing title and a modern third-person action game. It features classic customization options through skill trees that affect how you play, companions with genuine personalities, and a good main plot overall. However, it also remembers to implement complex and rewarding combat mechanics that encourage multiple different playstyles of fast-paced fighting. Although peculiar nuisances like the faulty karma system are irritating and bigger issues like the suddenly-sluggish experience halfway through the game make it less than perfect, there’s plenty of satisfaction in this title. While the “cause and effect” mechanics may not be as fleshed out as in modern titles like The Witcher 3, The Technomancer blends enough new qualities with vintage attributes in order to create an authentic world and a whole bunch of electric fun.

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tumblunni · 6 years

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AH FUCK I REMEMBERED IT AGAIN I swear its like clockwork, i keep making this post like once a damn year

OKAY SO THIS SCENE

now i like i never actually cried at persona 4, its actually my least favourite persona game cos it has so much bigoted stuff you have to ignore to get to the actual plot. At least those sorts of moments were sidequest only in P3 and P5 BUT THE ANIME ADAPTATION I knooooowww that the anime has a load of flaws but like I think I’m the only one who preferred it to the game. or at least this ONE SINGLE EPISODE was great, and SO GREAT that it was better than the anime and the game combined! and I never cried at anything in the game but this one damn anime scene made me sob like a happy equivelant of P3′s ending scene sobs... and now i end up associating this one particular remix of the boss battle theme with that scene instead of the game and GAH i cant hear it without being hyped!!!

so yeah TO EXPLAIN THE CONTEXT FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVENT SEEN IT In the game: shadow mitsuo is a tough boss fight but has no emotional story stuff around it, also is not very climactic at all cos its obvious from the start that he’s a fakeout final boss In the anime: THE OPPOSITE OF ALL DAT In the game: protagonist has no dialogue and no canon personality In the anime: THEY GAVE HIM A DAMN GOOD ONE In the game: protagonist never gets a Shadow and thus never gets any doubts or fears or triumph over them which unlocks super extra power and makes you cry like a damn bitch In the anime: GUESS WHAT THEY ADDED

And FUCK it is SUCH a good plot and I am SO angry that it wasn’t in the game cos now I have to tell people to watch a terrible anime adaptation just to see this one uncharacteristically impossibly universally good bit that somehow snuck in! It’s so great because they establish Yu’s personality as ‘the comically serious guy’ and he’s just so much more loveable when he’s quiet but not silent, and only pipes up when he needs to break his own badass rep with a really silly comic relief moment. I will forever imagine his anime personality as canon, it makes the game so much better! And like once you’ve got so attatched to him you get the surprise awesomeness of him getting a Shadow episode, which you weren’t expecting cos its just Game Rules that the protagonist is always infallable and voiceless.

And I love how they pulled off that surprise, too! They show the gang about to fight Mitsuo before the opening credits, and then afterwards it seems like we’ve flashed forwards to after the fight. And like, it being a bad adaptation somehow makes it work even better?? It wouldn’t seem out of character for them to have skipped some minor fights in a montage sequence. And then the episode just continues, and you’re expecting that any second everyone will find out that Mitsuo wasn’t really the real villain, but instead it just keeps rolling into a happy ending?? And it just keeps going AFTERWARDS, and shows it all turn sour and scary and Yu has to face his demons And its so relateable what his troubles are! his biggest fear is losing his friends and finding out the people he cares about don’t care as much about him, or that he’s useless and could be easily replaced by someone better. His bad ending isn’t anything big or supernatural, it’s just the ordinary anxiety of finishing high school and wondering how long you’ll be able to keep in touch. And it works so well as a love letter to the game?? Cos you see him struggling to get the words out, you see him slowly becoming actually silent, and becoming actually superfluous in his own life. You see him fading into the background as everyone else leaves and nothing would even be different without him. if anything IS different, its them being HAPPIER without him! So its a deconstruction of his original gameplay limitations, and also a dark subversion of the game’s happy ending of everyone finishing high school, etc.

And then its just SO GOOD and SO CATHARTIC in the end HOLY FUCK Cos you find out they’re ACTUALLY STILL FIGHTING MITSUO And Yu is trapped inside an illusion of his own shadow and you never even noticed it happening! And then he has his big triumphant moment of facing himself and moving forward and you see his friends reach through the illusion world and pull him back to reality and then he unleashes THE MOST WELL COREOGRAPHED BEATDOWN IN ALL OF HISTORY God, this gives me the same sort of feels as Garnet vs Jasper in Steven Universe! Its a similar moment of a normally unflappable character being defeated, then coming back stronger after an emotional sequence and winning in a rematch that’s synced super well to an awesome song! (tho an instrumental here, not as cool as having relevant lyrics!) But MAN the fight is so fucking cool even with the anime’s sometimes terrible animation and tendancy to have the friend characters not actually do anything, lol. That’s still a problem here cos it’s unintentionally comical how they stop fighting and step back to let Yu deal the final blow, but I mean it works cos its A REALLY FUCKIN GREAT ONE, and they still contributed more than usual by holding bac mitsuo offscreen while Yu was trapped, yknow? BUT ANYWAY THE SCENE AND WHY ITS MY FAVOURITE THING EVER AND I REWATCH IT WHEN I’M DEPRESSED TO KILL ALL SADS Yu does an epic rolling thunder of Every Damn Move In His Moveset All One After Another In An Animation Train (Holy Fuck This Explains How Every Other Episode Had Zero Budget) And cos of how the magic works in this setting he gets to dramatically call out all the names to the beat of the music and the english voiceactor fucking nails the exact nuance of the original and I am SO HAPPY cos he barely got to say two words in the original game! its just Good. its just Really Good.

anyway have a link its probably not as cool out of context or maybe its not as cool if you dont relate intensely to anime Yu’s neuroses or have a dumb bunni brain that’s easily manipulated by Cool Musics And A Guy Yelling Ara Mitama but have it anyway and now i am gonna shut up about this until probably twelve months later when I remember it again

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i cry evertiem

seriously man i know that feeling of like.. the triumph of realizing a certain negative thing you believed about yourself is wrong, or standing up to an abuser, or conquering some part of your depression, or just generally a triumph over self hate against all the odds! And I really wish that i could get an awesome theme tune and gloriously animated boss battle actually blowing up those negative feelings and then they never return. But I guess that just means that real life people are even more badass, cos we don’t get one big epiphany moment, we keep fighting and defeating all those self doubt boss monsters throughout our lives. I’m like twelve yu narukamis! :D

#blunni thoughts #video #tho lol it also kinda kindles a few self doubt feelings too #the whole embarassment of admitting a very flawed scene in a very flawed animated show gave you such personal tears #and knowing that probably not many other people had the same moment cos it was very personal to you and the state you were #in when you first saw that episode #but like yeah even if you cant understand why i felt so much about this dumb scene i just hope you #have similar things that make you feel the same way in your own life #and its good to get feels about silly animated stuff sometimes cos at least its a thing you can rewatch whenever #you need a pick me up!

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