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blee-bleep · 4 years

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Though I disagree vehemently about your take I'm also very curious of your arguments for why you think Akko is such a bad character?

Anon, you have no idea what you just fucking asked of me. Time for a review! This is going to be hella’ long.

Vanilla Character that insists that she has personality

So the one thing I’m going to start off with is; The Relatable/Vanilla Protagonist Syndrome. This is the syndrome that is used for most main characters in order to have a clean-slate character that is basically the audience in order to promote the world-building in the series by having them absolutely no clue of what is the world around them. That is what Akko exactly is, and that is what Trigger abuses her out of.

Little Witch Academia is an anime that focuses solely on world-building, so much so that they’re willing to pile over their characters in order to show what magic can do.

(And apparently for Trigger, world-building also means learning who the author of a 200-yo Twilight spinoff book is and who was Holbrooke’s dad)

But the point is, the anime is a pile of boring trash fire that focuses on world-building, even from its original exposition of the OVA. It uses the pattern of ‘theme/problem of the week’ in half of the series with arcs going nowhere for a while and suddenly rushes an epiphany in the last few episodes. *cough ep 15*

The point with world-building serialization is that it needs a way to be promoted, and what way for it to promote is to get Akko to fuck around with it. As her job as the protag, that’s exactly what she does for more than half of the series. She’s like a stretchy character that is carried by the plot with gross insistence from the show that she has character (which is being stubborn and clumsy that is written off as ‘passionate’).

What’s worse is Trigger has all these ideas yet none of them are polished to its fullest (like the political divide between witches and modern government) or is overlapped by some bullshit to add because Japan. (seriously, a hunting-themed episode with cool lore, and yet a third of the episode is all about robots and building it? What the fuck?)

See, that’s why I think Akko is a horribly written character, not her character itself (if that were the case then I would’ve ditched the show the first episode) but because how she’s executed with it for the show. She’s constantly pulled by different bullshit the show comes up and makes her pull the answers the episode needs out of thin fucking air just because the writers said ‘fuck you’ to development and that they need to end the problem at some point right?

If characters can’t be tied correctly to the worldbuilding then there’s a chance that the character themselves would break, because it just can’t often work with what you’ve already placed in the previous episodes you’ve set up in the first place. Arcs overlap with each other and LWA doesn’t do shit for that until it needs a banging climax.

Akko is constantly renewed and she learns nothing from what she learned (or at least hints of it), except for the metamorphosis bullshit and Shiny Rod. Which brings me to my next point on why Akko is such a horrible character.

Shiny Rod is a Leech

This thing is basically the plot device that Akko is so tied to. If there’s ever an episode where it solely focuses on Akko herself, it’s often related to either Shiny Rod or Chariot du Nord, which is the shittiest way to limit a character with so much exposition with everything the series has thrown at her. The only other way the series doesn’t do this to her is Diana in episode 12, but it isn’t even focused on her, it’s focused on the cabbage and her Draco Malfoy syndrome.

Anyways, were an episode be connected to Akko in some way, it’s always limiting to her duty as the holder of the Shiny Rod and the occasional situation from Chariot. Not from her friends, who she clearly relates to and has more history with, but with the Shiny Rod and Chariot.

The series lazily signs this as Akko’s resolution to her character by the last episode (FUCK THAT) and does nothing else with her relationship with other characters outside of Diana and Chariot. Honestly, you’d expect that after going through Sucy’s mind and visiting Lotte’s hometown, she would’ve grown as a better character and more than being a two-dimensional ‘chosen-one’ character who only gets an episode if it focuses on the plot-device that pulled her in the magical world in the first place.

But no, Trigger is still insisting pies, weird shops, and other boring stuff needs to be shown for the series to make it interesting, and dumps the idea to the next. An arc is never properly made for all the shit they let Akko go through because the series is so fast-paced in the wrong places. And when it does focus on what is important (more important than finding about Nightfall’s author), it’s usually done spontaneously thus eliminating the suppose suspense that the single important thing is supposed to do *I HATE EPISODE 15 WHAT THE FUCK*

The point is, Akko is just a ‘believing heart’. A holder of Shiny Rod, who managed to get under Chariot without her knowing. It’s like she’s Midoriya (My Hero Academia) but much watered down and if you take that away from her, she has nothing, when out of all the stuff she could’ve had.

What LWA’s writers hadn’t realized is that what they actually wrote for Akko is what could’ve been her focus but Trigger insists for the world-building theme is that Akko’s arc should only come in the climax and the filler episodes are for her friends because you know, it won’t be more interesting that way and now they have a main protagonist that’s actually interesting beyond their design and suppose-personality.

Thus I’m next to my last bullshit:

Akko, the Wasted Potential™

I recently rewatched Citrus lately, and though the show is much narrow than LWA’s world of magic, I realized what actually makes it better than it in ways that the latter fails. And it’s their protagonist.

I know you guys will trash about Yuzu being a simp and all, and I absolutely agree with that, but what makes Yuzu better than Akko is not because she’s more down-to-earth, but she has a three-dimensional mindset, a mindset which is the very thing kept away from Akko.

While Yuzu may not have been pushed into a world of magic by the neck and gets dragged by the plot as violently as Akko (and the two very different themes of the two shows of course), but if you pull those away, their passion are nearly built the same. What differs them both is that Yuzu actually acts out what she needs to do and builds a steady relationship with the other characters around her, even if it’s very subtle and small. (Like, Harumin being her wicked hot sidekick? God yes, top-tier Gyaru)

Akko, on the other hand, literally goes into one of her best friend’s mind in a poison-induced coma and gets shoved into her other best friend’s culture by visiting her hometown. You might think she’d grow from that and realize what it takes to be a better character, right? WRONG.

Of course, Trigger uses these things as filler episodes and nothing more. It doesn’t reflect on Akko’s character because she’s not allowed to think like it should. Though the show would insist she has personality, it does the opposite when Akko’s only character is only used as ‘believing heart’ for the Shiny Rod and nothing much else, because the only times when they do get her a new attitude is dropped off right after.

It would’ve been cool if they dropped the world-building theme for a bit and focus on how they should make the characters much more interesting than having their personalities as the root problems of episodes.

When I first watched LWA, I had so much more expectation for the characters themselves, especially Amanda O’Neill after her introduction in episode 3. But came episode 5 and then she… didn’t really matter that much despite being in half of the episode. And she didn’t have another one not until 11 episodes later. Imagine making and hyping up such a unique character and barely giving her screentime of three episodes! That’s one of the grossest things you can do in baiting lesbians, Trigger!

And it doesn’t stop at Amanda; it applies to almost every other character. Chariot is the pink-print disappointment of a hyped character that didn’t have enough time. She’s a plot-device character that everyone was anticipating but she’s barely given the after of a shitty episode 14 (that has another completely different problem altogether). Episode 15 was literally the worst you could’ve done to make a twist because a) the development leading to that revelation was undercooked, and especially shitty because the show basically used Croix as a plot device, b) it’s done nearly towards the end of the series so the timing for her hype was weirdly placed, and c) Chariot’s personality from that episode is being used repeatedly just to let Akko become a sitting duck.

So yeah, Trigger was so focused on the concept of world-building and making magic look as interesting as possible that the idea that maybe the characters would flat-out look bleak was not in their cone of vision. Akko was fundamentally a boring protagonist because she keeps getting pulled apart and has not ingrained anything in that, and to rub salt into the wound, she becomes so used to it that when Croix set her up with the Wagandea trap, Chariot has to intervene and at the cost of her flight powers, which does not help their characters one bit.

Akko is a shitty protagonist Trigger shredded apart just for their sake of world-building and she has learned nothing from what the show has thrown at her because the writers didn’t think she needed it, because, in the first place, it’s not about her. It’s about the Shiny Rod and completing Chariot’s story (which is half-assed in its own way). Lord knows how they botched her to the point she’s blank. She’s nothing more than a ‘believing heart’ and if Trigger just keeps there, that’s forever what she is. And that, in itself, is why I think Akko is a horrible character.

#LWA #little witch academia #atsuko 'akko' kagari #citrus #yuzu aihara #chariot du nord #shiny rod #bleewrites #pluggin in the notes so yall see this mess

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ansu-gurleht · 5 years

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ok fellas lets put on our metaphysics and cosmology hats. well, you can, i guess, but admittedly, mine is permanently fused to my scalp. i’m always down for some good ol’ cosmic bullshit.

so i wanna break this up into two parts, i think. i’ll break down what i think is the overall structure of the aurbis, and then i’ll talk a bit about how i think it works.

ok! part one! first of all, we got the aurbis. the aurbis is basically just, everything. it includes aetherius, mundus, oblivion, nirn, etc. it might also expand beyond aetherius? but i think that’s just The Void, so we won’t worry about that. nothing interesting really happens in The Void.

so what’s aetherius? it’s god city, god central, super mystical being heaven. it’s where various heavens are located, like the nords’ sovngarde, and the redguards’ far shores, and khajiit’s sand behind the stars, and the imperials, uh, less imaginatively named “heaven.” it’s where dead people of all kinds hang out, and chill with some gods, like the magna-ge, led by magnus, who all left mundus b/c they didn’t like it and chilled in aetherius instead. except they left a bunch of holes in mundus, like they just forgot to close the door behind them after they left or something. on the bright side, all those holes (which we call the sun and stars) give us the magicy magic stuff from aetherius, where everything is magic, probably.

ok, “magicy magic” is not what it’s called. it’s called creatia! it’s basically the substance of pure creation, what everything that ever existed is made of. except it needs to be given form and purpose to actually be Things. otherwise it’s just Stuff, not Things. basically the whole purpose of making the mundus inside of aetherius was to turn some Stuff into Things, b/c lorkhan thought it was a good idea and most people agreed at the time.

so “mundus” is everything inside of aetherius, in like a bubble. (a lot of how this stuff works is bubble-based. aurbis is a bubble in the void, mundus is a bubble in aetherius, planets and planes and stuff are bubbles in mundus, etc.) but there’s actually a lot of empty space in the bubble, b/c at first they (here referring to the et’ada, or primordial spirits) couldn’t quite make up their mind on what world they wanted to make, so they made a bunch, but then scrapped all that and used some of the leftover pieces to make nirn. so at this point nirn’s just this little ball in space, not a lot going for it. not even an atmosphere! (fun fact: air just doesn’t exist in the elder scrolls! dunno why! just doesn’t!)

but then the et’ada get together and try to liven up the place. except they’re like, “woah, all this creating makes me feel like i’m dying,” b/c they kinda were. here’s the thing: everything’s made of creatia, even the gods. and y’know, equivalent exchange and all, so to make a World with Things in it, they had to use up some of their power.

this was generally considered to be a bad thing, and lots of people got mad at lorkhan, who really just expected them to be more dedicated to this project. i really don’t think he intentionally tricked anybody. he just had an idea for a fun thing to do with/for his friends, getting enlightened and stuff, and maybe omitted some of those finer details at the beginning b/c he knew nobody would go along with it if they knew. but he wasn’t being malicious about it, no matter what those darned elves say.

so everybody got together on top of a big ol’ tower to talk this through, b/c it was time to buckle down and decide what to do now. that lil chat was called convention, and was basically the first important thing to ever happen. it was actually kind of the first thing to happen, too, b/c one of the members was like “hey, let’s make linear time a thing” and so it was.

anyways, all those et’ada were sorta split five ways about this. some, like magnus and the magna-ge, just flat out refused to stick around and give up any of their power, and ran off and became stars. some, who would be later called daedra, didn’t wanna give up any power either, but they kinda had a vested interest in the thing at this point, so they went out into oblivion, where there was a bunch of leftover, unused creatia, and they made their own little planes and proceeded to screw with the world for funsies.

on the other hand, some folks were still gungho about making this world, and were willing to sacrifice themselves completely to let it survive and prosper. those would be the earthbones, who literally just gave up themselves and established a lot of nirn’s physical laws. some folks also thought this was worth saving, but also didn’t wanna die. so they gave up a little bit of their power, but kept the rest of it. those are the aedra!

(fun side note: the aedra are the other planets in mundus! we know at least akatosh, julianos, and arkay are stationary, b/c they make up part of some constellations. arkay has a little buddy orbiting him called arkay. there’s also the planets zenithar and kynareth, who might actually move, but we don’t know for sure, i guess. also, zenithar has a buddy orbiting him called mara, and MARA has a buddy orbiting her called dibella.

(what i really want to get at here is that while the planets are absolutely the divines, i believe it’s only part of them! hence why they’re kind of in the middle of the road between the earthbones and the magna-ge. i think they left those planets behind to sort of be their eyes-and-ears on nirn, and also probably to help stabilize it, but after that, they took what they had left back to aetherius. maybe through the sun, but also maybe the planets are sort of like, if they were peaking in on us from aetherius. so what we see as the planets is just what little of them is in the way of the hole. but anyways!)

the rest of the et’ada went a similar route to the earthbones, except they didn’t sacrifice anything really. they just kinda decided to live on nirn! they’re the ehlnofey, who eventually become the mer and men of nirn. (presumably all the beast races and stuff were just already there, or somehow imported from somewhere else [the argonians might literally be transplants from one of those leftover worldbits nirn was made from]).

ok, one last thing. i think nirn orbits the sun, so isn’t really the center of mundus. it’s the metaphysical center, b/c it’s what mundus exists for. but i just can’t wrap my head around how the sun would be said to rise through constellations during their seasons if nirn wasn’t moving around it and changing its perspective on the sun. maybe it’s possible somehow in a nirn-centric model, but i just don’t know how.

ok! that’s wraps up what i think about the cosmology of the series, i think. i’m actually going to make a separate post for the metaphysics, for two reasons. 1, this post has gotten long enough already, and 2, ho boy do i have a lot to talk about there. you might notice that it’ll probably be pretty different in tone - sure, i could describe all that stuff in my usual plucky sort of way, but this kinda stuff always just works out better when you take a bit more of a serious tone. i’ll undoubtedly get a bit poetic about it too, b/c it’s damn good stuff.

anyways! keep your eyes peeled for that! all sorts of stuff about towers, reality, chims, time, etc!

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