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rin-the-shadow · 5 years

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Need to ramble about episode 22

And when I say ramble, I do mean with little side tangents here and there. Spoilers below the cut.

So as you might have figured out from previous posts, reblogs, and questionable parodies, I have very aggressively mixed feelings about episode 22 of Dororo, with a variety of different things bugging me about it.

One is how fast things deteriorated post-episode 19. The way things had been going up until that point, and up until Dororo’s near-drowning, it’s hard for me to buy that they would have gotten to the point they were in episode 22 that fast. I can buy the freakout at the end of episode 20 because it’s in the moment, but the area that makes it harder to swallow is the aura suddenly going completely red around the heart without so much as a warning beforehand from Biwamaru, who has, for the most part, been fairly consistent with commenting on it before.

Still, we’ve got the explanation that something is happening with the last demon, which could potentially explain it, if now that it’s not being held back by the Goddess of Mercy, it’s able to exercise a degree of influence. Sure, why not.

But aside from the way the pacing feels like it suddenly realized it had four episodes left and floored the accelerator, it also feels like the writers are trying really hard to sell this “oh no he might become a demon” plot point, but with less and less communication about it from Dororo--who, to be fair, is only eight--ten-ish, but has also had no problem point-blank saying “if you do that, you’re acting like a demon” before. I can understand him struggling to articulate, but at the same time, it also feels a little like the writers are slamming a clamp down on communication in areas that it would be kind of important.

The main issue I’m having is the sudden shift to “stab anything in my path while riding a flaming demon horse” mode. Hyakkimaru has been established with a capacity towards ruthless pragmatism before. He’s been established as reacting strongly emotionally in the moment, but he’s been able to work back from it relatively quickly once the moment’s passed. Even when he slaughters the samurai who murdered Mio and the kids in episode 6, it’s still a pretty fast turnaround once Dororo interferes, and it isn’t like any of them weren’t directly involved or like he goes hunting other samurai after the fact.

This most recent thing felt like senseless carnage extended over a majority of the episode. And frankly, it feels like it’s the writers trying to push “oh noes he’s going to become a demon, maybe he should have just sat back and happily let the demons eat him before.” Which, I will be pissed if that’s what it ends up saying. As Dark_FalconZ had stated in their post about it, it feels excessively cruel for Hyakkimaru’s character. And again, with what I spent a majority of series episodes watching of him, it feels like a really sudden swerve.

There’s a very large part of me that hopes the following episodes have a damn good explanation for it, because at this point, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it as anything other than writers desperately feeling that they need angst and stakes and whatever.

At the same time, I also have to remind myself that at this point in Princess Tutu, which features a ballerina helping a prince restore the pieces of his fragmented heart and started off comparatively lighthearted before getting dark, the prince was a demon bird actively trying to feed people to the raven, because the raven’s blood was tainting one of his heart shards, and it wasn’t like that didn’t get better. (It also had a similarly lighthearted and silly episode 19 before everything went to crap and he started molting feathers before becoming a demon bird, so there’s that.) Like, it’s not the same show, but a part of me wants to hold on to the similar tone things in hopes that we might get some relief.

As for things I have aggressively mixed feelings on, I’d like to mention Tahomaru’s reaction when Mutsu tried to sacrifice herself. On one hand, sure, you don’t want your friend to do that, understandable. On the other, sacrificing one person for the good of the many sure doesn’t sound so great when it’s someone who actually matters to you, now, does it? And with Mutsu being a willing sacrifice as well, the situation was a little different.

Like, I don’t want them to die. I’m actually opposed to character death except when it is in some way fulfilling to their character arc, with a prime example, for me at least, actually being Tahomaru’s arc in the game Blood Will Tell, where his loyalty to his father drives him to fight Hyakkimaru initially, but then (ironically because he doesn’t have the information about the deal) backs off once he realizes he’s hunting demons, with the warning to stay out of his way. His loyalty drives him to stop his father from killing an unconscious Hyakkimaru inside a temple, recognizing that Daigo isn’t acting like himself. He comes to the conclusion that the demons influencing his father are what’s making him not himself, and resolves to help Hyakkimaru and Dororo with the hope of purging his father of their influence, ultimately throwing himself between Dororo and the disembodied demons in order to prevent their corrupting him.

And ultimately, his becoming a Fiend and being cut down in Dororo’s place is what allows Daigo to shake off the remainder of the Fiends’ influence, meaning his death accomplishes what he had set out to do. If he’d been killed off right after his own boss fight, even during the Kyubi boss fight? Not so much.

So I don’t want them to die, especially in a pointless shock death or an “oooooh, look how far Hyakki and Taho have fallen!” moment, but I do have a hard time not raising a brow a little bit that we were all “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, but only if the one isn’t someone who matters to me.”

That said, I actually wish the whole “We can’t sacrifice one person if it’s actually someone who matters to me!” had been touched on earlier. Episode 22 is a bit too late to bring that up and actually have it go anywhere, and if it had happened sooner, it’s something that could have given the character (and the writers) opportunity to explore and see where it leads. And I’m kind of interested in seeing that. But it’s not going to happen because there’s fricking two episodes left in the series.

At the same time, I’m also aware that I’m a little prickly about the plot right now because of how things were handled in Avengers: Endgame, and Infinity War before it, and Madoka Magica: Rebellion before that, and so there is a part of me that worries this will be the same. On the other hand, I have a hard time thinking they’ll go that route, based on previous adaptations (particularly the movie and the game). Turning your protagonist into a monster on the 50th anniversary of the series strikes me as a bit in poor taste, but at the same time, I’ve read enough comics to know that writers don’t always think about that sort of thing. But I’m still hoping that it’s just me being prickly and overreacting, and that they won’t do the thing I’m dreading on their own fricking 50th anniversary.

I would like to remain...dubiously optimistic about the conclusion (and hey, maybe Jukai and Biwa carry aglaophotis somewhere), and I would like to think the writers are simply setting us up to expect worse than we’ll get. The fact that I haven’t been able to find any episode preview for 23 does raise a brow, but then that could also go either way. I would like to remain optimistic. But I also think I needed to ramble a bit in order to do so.

If you’ve somehow managed to read through to the end of this with my rambly nervy writing, then thank you for that. I have a tendency to overexplain while adding a bunch of extra metaphors/comparisons, and then overexplain those, and it gets worse when I get nervous. With these already being a bunch of relatively disorganized thoughts about the latest episode....

Again, thank you if you’ve somehow made it to the end of this with any part of it making any sense. If you’ve got your own two cents, I’d be interested to hear them.

#spoiler warning #dororo #dororo 2019 #episode 22 spoilers #blood will tell spoilers #princess tutu spoilers #though mostly dororo spoilers #rin rambles #rin overanalyzes stuff #rin's aggressively mixed feelings and bitchiness

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nostalgic-blood · 6 years

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so yeah tri finale thoughts

i went into this movie with rock bottom expectations. mostly because i went into symbiosis riding high due to the ridiculously juicy poster that turned out to be the baitest bait that has ever bait.

and i suppose perception helps because I mostly enjoyed it! my biggest fear was that they’d try to answer the millions of questions and mysteries they brought up in one single movie, and seeing their track record it’d be done rather sloppily. instead, they went for a sequel hook so it made sense to leave out the answers to some mysteries. It’s not as if homeostasis and yggdrasil were the reason I was watching tri. If the lore was why I was watching it I’d be bored and left long ago

like thank god they didn’t explain much about huckmon or alphamon because i do not care. I do understand on an objective standpoint that leaving so many of these things in the air is bad writing, but for most of the movies they already reserve like 60% of the screentime for meiko and her murderous cat so really what spotlight is left is prime real estate for characters and digimon i actually care about. slice of life moment at an inappropriate point of the movie is better than static exposition for five minutes.

still what they did use the screentime for was a little odd, though not to the egregious degree of meiko in the previous movies. I find it interesting for instance that yamato and gabumon had a pretty long scene together but they are the only ones of the cast that never had a full-screen metalgarurumon evolution. they also spent a lot of time that wasn’t the occasional flashback or the recap at the beginning of every episode even though it’s released as movies and we literally just watched that scene showing the faceless military being inept at destroying the supernatural giant monster.

it feels like tri’s structure is far more rigid than average. As in they seem to follow some strict formula, which causes pacing issues and screentime priority issues. They also don’t really put thought into what goes into the structure. For instance we did get some Hikari spotlight because it was necessary due to the situation, what with tailmon having become part of the big evil bad. But instead of focusing on really anything specific on hikari’s character, it was mostly reactionary and worrying over meiko. There was a quick moment just before tailmon mega evolved which, when I put more thought into it was sort of poignant, but because that conflict of hikari’s character was so much more subtle than meiko’s plot it almost seems like it comes out of nowhere as a conclusion to hikari’s arc.

plus, they rip away more of tailmon’s agency when they simply refer to the big ordinemon boob butt monster as simply meicoomon that has absorbed tailmon. You can’t backtrack like that! We VERY CLEARLY SAW in symbiosis that tailmon TOO was corrupted as ophanimon falldown mode, and that the two digimon fused together in a rather blatant manner. It felt far more like they were equals when they became one than one digimon absorbing the other. There is no point to tailmon’s dark evolution if that never comes up in the plot! If no one ever brings it up! It feels like, just as the poster was, included just as fanservice and bait so more people would watch, but with zero substance.

Again, a rigid formula or structure, like the writers were all sitting in the room and throwing ideas on the wall, but the ideas are like “we should have a dramatic moment where tailmon disappears!” and they do. But it doesn’t do anything. It’s not really relevant because it’s not as if tailmon changes drastically or even dies. It feels like it was put there just for the drama itself, just to throw in a trailer so people will be like OMG DID TAILMON JUST DIE!?!?! HOW SAD!!! I NEED TO TUNE IN!1!!

or like “WE SHOULD BRING BACK WIZARDMON!” because fans of hikari and tailmon love wizardmon! so they do! for 3 seconds! He has no lines! We never see his face! What the fuck. It’s a tease that goes no where. They even have the audacity to include his hat in the poster for five seconds of screentime. I should have expected that after the ophanimon falldown mode debacle.

meanwhile the new characters are involved in drama that is actually affected by the plot, like meiko having to say goodbye to her partner forever because meicoomon is too far gone, and needs to be put down to end her suffering. Pretty dang relevant to the story right? it wasn’t simply put there for feels. Or Daigo dying. While the situation they got into seems kind of convoluted, like how they just happened to fall into the underground bunker where the 02 kids just happen to be, and Daigo just happens to be mortally wounded and Taichi just happens to be unscathed. People explain it away that Daigo “probably shielded Taichi as they fell” which he probably did! But when I have to say “probably” or if the audience has to explain it themselves because they SHOWED ABSOLUTELY NONE OF IT, then it’s especially jarring. Like the writers were like “Let’s kill Daigo off!” and put no thought into how they should smoothly transition to a moment where that could be possible.

like you spend six movies foreshadowing and leading up to the twist that meicoomon was the source of the infected, and then slowly revealed how much yggdrasil’s influence was exactly on her and then give us the shock of the century when she fuses with tailmon into the big bad near the end, and then we finally conclude the conflict of sacrifice by yes, we must put the cat down. Because of all the damage that she had inflicted, by the death that taichi had just witnessed and could do nothing to prevent. That the theme of the movies was growing up, no longer the fun friendly idealism of digimon back in adventure. That she was just too far gone, almost dragged another digimon down with her, lead to the death of humans !! and risked the death or at least the reboot of the real world. It was not time to debate what we should or should not do because if action is not done now it’d be too late.

but for daigo dying it’s like, oh he ends up in a room, somehow far more injured than taichi. Like at least give Taichi cuts and bruises so the whole “OMG TAICHI IS DEAD!!!” thing had a little more merit, and then not!gennai sets up a sadistic trap where only one of them will live and the one that lives will conveniently return back to the real world safe and sound with the 02 kids that have been missing this entire time. I mean, real convenient hm? kill off a guy for drama and put the main char where he needs to be while fixing up one of the biggest issues in the entire series with the lingering whereabouts of the 02 cast and no one seemingly caring. They tried to kill many birds with one stone, but they were too greedy, trying to kill so many birds that all the birds they killed weren’t intact bodies on the ground for feasting but mere scraps, as the stone was used in such force their remains were absolutely pulverized. I swear that analogy was going somewhere.

I was still sad about it tho, because I warmed up to daigo and maki as characters, and if maki doesn’t come back then these original chosen have left Tri in rather brutal and bloody fashion, tragic with no real positive spin aside from maki’s cautionary tale over sacrifice and what it can do to a person and daigo leaving lasting words to taichi. They were the first to get Digimon and save the world! The rest of the adventure kids and in the 02 epilogue everyone else gets their own digimon and lives out happily side-by-side. Why do the first get such a bad hand? It’s sad.

i’m a bit disappointed some of the coolest theories over tailmon and meicoomon as foils didn’t come true, which I mean I can’t really expect what with the track record of tri, but it would have been nice. tailmon would be light and then meicoomon is darkness, and the demon that results is even more powerful because they light that combined has been tainted by darkness, or w/e. there was little explanation for the fusion and again, they often referred to tailmon as simply having been absorbed. When she escaped ordinemon I doubt there was memory of being ophanimon falldown mode. I guess the koushiro-ex-machina mass return of their selves before the reboot has some amazing ability to purify on the fly. Could have been done better!

still, on an emotional level I enjoyed it. Even if they planned every emotional moment in the most soulless, structured way possible without any ounce of passion I think I still would have teared up at some scenes. Seeing all the megas in grand animation was great, and the fighting was good this time too unlike the body slamming fun times from symbiosis.

so my initial rating of this movie is 2.5 stars out of 5, but I will minus .5 stars for the ridiculous and unnecessary amount of fucking butt shots ordinemon has. I don’t know what person in this wide wide world would actually enjoy seeing cthulhu’s bare fat ass every twenty seconds but if they were the primary demographic somehow then I guess I have no justification to complain!

I also minus .5 stars for the stupid pointless recaps. And minus another .5 for doing nothing specific for hikari’s character. That least us at 1.5 stars.

BUT ONE WHOLE EXTRA STRAW FOR HOLYDRAMON!!! AWWWWW YEAH

Even if Holydramon only was around for 15 seconds itself, it still got a gorgeously animated evolution sequence and as I do not stare at trailers (and it never being on a poster) that surprise was not only well worth the wait but the time it took to process. I was cheering at 3am in the morning.

but . 5 deducted for the stupid wizardmon bait SHAME ON THE BAIT THE BAITEST BAIT I HATE THE BAIT

2 stars out of 5. Eh good enough. I personally put the movies as 3 > 6 > 2 > 4 > 1 > 5. That is all and Spotto out.

#digimon!shit #text!post #rant!post #spoilers everywhere yoooo

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