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shaymcsudonim · 4 years

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“My Six Months Training Didn’t Prepare Me For This.”

Really?

Six months of fighting spiders in caves and throwing birthday parties for nuns didn’t prepare you to fight a demon-possessed, power-hungry maniac? Who would have ever guessed...

...except for the fact that, on a meta level, you might be entirely wrong about that, Asta.

On the face of things, we’ve run into a textbook arc of good old-fashioned ludonarrative dissonance.

That is to say, in the Manga, things flowed smoothly over the timeskip. Declaration that they have six months to prepare for war was followed by the beginnings of said war.

In the Anime, however, events are unfolding like an accordion into six months of random antics and buffoonery. Incidentally, I don’t remember whether that’s six months of in-show time or six months of real-time but, either way, we are in for a ride.

Anyway, going back to my main point, Asta’s determination is one of his best qualities, but I’d argue that it’s eclipsed by his kindness, in terms of how he affects the world, if nothing else.

When he declares himself the future Wizard King, he boasts that he’s going to make a better life for everyone, including Sister Lily and all his adopted younger siblings, of course, but he also explicitly includes Yuno in this statement.

And, when Yuno decides that they’re rivals, he echoes this in saying that he’s going to make Asta’s life better once he’s Wizard King.

Kindness breeds kindness, and the circle of virtue spins ever wider.

For Yuno and Asta, kindness is as much a part of their rivalry as competition, and the examples are numerous: Asta saving Yuno’s necklace, Yuno scaring off Sekke, and so on.

But, even outside of rivalry, Asta’s shown himself to be a startlingly compassionate individual: he didn’t challenge any of the nobles at the banquet until they started making fun of Noelle, he visited Vetto’s human-reincarnate’s grave (one of the few permanent deaths in the series), and as soon as he finds out that the Witch Queen’s blood can heal his arms, he immediately shares it with Kiato and Kahono, and that doesn’t even touch on the kindness he shows the reincarnated elves, whenever possible.

And how might all this tie into Asta’s training, you ask?

Well, it might not. Everything is probably going to depend on the character and values of the devil inhabiting his grimoire.

If the Devil’s evil, then he’ll undoubtedly be the main antagonist of the series. He certainly thought it was hilarious when Zagred died. And he tried to take over Asta’s body in the Witches’ Forest, of course. It’s entirely possible that Asta’s Demon is completely evil and irredeemable.

But, still, I think that there might be more to him.

Granted, I also thought there might be more to Toffee from SVTFOE, and that obviously went nowhere, so my track record certainly isn’t the best.

But, anyway, moving on, what good qualities might Asta’s Demon possess?

Well, he’s anti-magic, and he somehow managed to get himself stuck inside a magic grimoire: Licht’s old Four Leaf grimoire, if I recall correctly, which was turned into a five-leaf grimoire after Licht was corrupted.

If Asta’s Demon has any control over who gets chosen by the grimoire, then it says a lot that he picked Asta. After all, if anyone with even the slightest bit of magic got the grimoire, either they wouldn’t be able to use it, or it would kill them outright.

Given that the grimoire appeared to Asta outside the tower, and after the ceremony, I’d assume that the demon had at least some power over who received the five-leaf grimoire.

The interesting thing to me is that Asta didn’t get the grimoire during the ceremony. Here was a human with no magic whatsoever, a perfect vessel for the demon’s antimagic. Instead, he left the tower without anything. The five-leaf didn’t appear to him until he publicly defended Yuno.

It’s possible that the Five Leaf Demon cared about the character of whoever it was that would use his power.

Which, there might be some precedent for. Vanica and Megicula seem to be on the same wavelength most of the time. Possibly, Devil and Devil Host must be somewhat compatible, personality-wise? If so, it says a lot about this particular devil, that he’d be compatible with Asta.

And, even if he is evil, I’d give even odds that the Five Leaf Demon will, eventually, get worn down by the sheer force of Asta’s personality, just like half of the other villains in Black Clover.

But, if the Demon is any sort of a decent person, then, compared to any other demon out there, he’s had a ridiculously long time to get to know his host, while having only the most indirect sharing of power.

And, not only does this demon understand Asta better than the other demons likely understand their hosts, he probably comprehends humanity better than any of them, as well.

His first attempt at bargaining, in the Witches’ Forest, seemed to be a straightforward exchange: the Five Leaf Demon would win Asta’s fight for him, but Asta would have to allow the Demon to possess him in return, and it wasn’t stated whether this was a temporary possession. Asta punched him in the face and took the power, anyway.

Whether this was allowed because Five Leaf didn’t want his host to die, because he was just too surprised by Asta’s actions, or for some other reason, wasn’t stated.

In this latest chapter, there’s no attempt at subtlety. The Demon waited for Asta to approach him, then proposed a straightforward bargain: a part of Asta’s body for power, in this case, his right arm. Again, not stating exactly what it meant for the arm to belong to the demon.

It remains to be seen what Five Leaf’s motivations are. But, now that one of his bargains has finally been accepted, we’re probably a lot closer to finding out.

Also, if the demon does somehow end up being good, then they’ve already got half the friendship-bonding aspect out of the way, since Five Leaf has spent, what, at least a year watching Asta do random crap? If being on the same wavelength as their host eventually allows for more power transfer between Demon and Human, then the next arc could very easily look like this:

[Image ID: A painting of a tall figure in spiky armor and a horned helmet chasing a visibly-frightened smaller figure, in silver armor, through the woods. The imposing figure is labeled, ‘Me not realizing there’s a main storyline and kept doing the side quests until I reached max level,’ and the smaller figure is labeled, ‘first mission boss.’ end image ID]

And, I’m not gonna lie, that’d be pretty funny.

#black clover #black clover spoilers #spoilers #rant #ludonarrative dissonance

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shy-mel · 7 years

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Horizon Zero Dawn Write up

Horizon Zero Dawn was one of my most anticipated games of the year and after getting the platinum I must say that unless a sequel gets pumped out this year, it’s easily my top game of the year. I love exploring the vast area, meeting all the unique NPCs, finding the pieces to the story, and blowing up the robots. The next few paragraphs will go into each of those in detail. I will also mention the things that I did not care for as well. This post will be very spoiler heavy so DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE GAME and want to find out the full story yourself.

My biggest issue was not being able to organize the inventory in a reasonable manner. You could just dump everything around you and pick it up in your preferred order, but that would be a huge waste of time. A storage area would have also been nice since even at max capacity, I still had many moments where I would have to dash off to sell things to a merchant or just dump items. The human AI could use some improvement because even on hard mode I could whistle over an enemy, kill them, then rinse and repeat without other nearby enemies reacting much. I do agree that the developer’s response to the criticisms about cultural appropriation could have been netter.

Now onto the good stuff! Horizon is easily one of the best-looking games out there. The game world features forests, mountains, lakes, snowy areas, desert areas, has dynamic weather conditions relevant to each section. Cauldrons showcase incredible technology that was used for the creation of the robots. As you go farther into the game, you get to visits the bunkers from Project Zero Dawn that have decayed and been unavailable to the current humans. Finding all the machine flowers, Banuk figures, and ancient vessels was extremely fun.

The characters in Horizon are interesting and engaging. From the Nora who live in a secluded matriarchy, the Carja who are on a new path with their new king, the metal tinkering Oseram, the independent Banuk, and the Shadow Carja who do not accept the downfall of the previous king. Each group has its own culture and way of life. Aloy while accepted as a Nora after the beginning of the game freely interacts with people from all walks of life. She helps a father and daughter reconnect after they have grown apart, helps a dowager queen and her son escape being pawns for the upper Shadow Carja, helps those grieving for the loss of their loved ones, and much more.

My favorite NPCs in the game have to be Sylens, Talanah, and Elisabet. Sylens is continuously questing for knowledge. That is his one goal and his only to reason to assist Aloy. He even tells her not to trust him, but to merely work with him. The scene at the end with him holding Hades and trying to figure out who awoke it got me so pumped. I enjoyed Talanah for her fierceness and for her wanting to open the hunting lodge to everyone. Elisabet showed great characterization as not only was she dedicated to protecting the environment with her green-robots, but she worked tirelessly to fix Ted’s mess. Her sacrifice at the end to save the other Project Zero Dawn collaborators was very touching, as was her conversation with Gaia that played during the ending.

Horizon’s story is easily one of the best in gaming these last few years. It doesn’t suffer from heavy ludonarrative dissonance that titles such as Tomb Raider 2013 did. Aloy’s story starts out as one solely for her to find her mother but ends with finding out what happened to the old ones and preventing another destruction of life on Earth. Ted is a great villain in the sense that he is not boasting of his villainess, but by trying to escape it by any means necessary. He gets angry with his employees for not building a backdoor into the robots when he was the one who said to make it impossible to override. He only agrees to fund Project Dawn to prevent Elisabet revealing the glitch in Faro robots. He deletes the Apollo database as he believes that it will prevent future generations from making the same mistake he did. He kills the other alphas so that they cannot spread their knowledge either. His ego issues left billions dead and a vast amount of history erased.

Aloy has a variety of weapons to take down her foes. Bows are great for getting in quick shots and taking down smaller enemies. The ropecaster can make taking down bigger foes a breeze once you have them pinned down. A variety of bombs means you can always have a blast. The traps and wires allow you to plan for tougher foes. Overriding enemies can get you a mount to dash across the land or give you the upper hand in a tough fight. I played the game on hard and only found the corrupted zone with the two Rockbreakers to be challenging. Ended up just cheesing it and shooting them from across the river.

Overall Horizon is an excellent game filled what I enjoy the most out of games: fun combat, interesting characters, and a good story. I do not often find games that meet all three but Horizon sure does. I look forward to where this series goes in the future and I want to congratulate Guerrilla Games and the other teams that worked on it. Horizon is a lovely piece of art that I will cherish.

#Horizon Zero Dawn #Horizon Zero Dawn spoilers #spoilers #Guerrilla Games #PS4

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