#the premises are also true? and like thinking about it i’m fairly sure the inverse is NOT true. also ran it by my dad who agreed on that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gunnerpalace · 4 years

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And I’m 💯 sure that you’re blocked and you can eat it.

But I would like to talk about this idea a little, actually. So, here are a couple of points:

The thing that a lot of modern-day “Bleach fans” don’t get is that as far as Japan is concerned, the only thing that really sells Bleach to the mass-market general audience is Ichigo and Rukia interacting. The hard truth those “Bleach fans” refuse to accept is that most of fights sucked, most of the mysteries sucked, and other than the two of them (and maybe Toushirou and Byakuya) most of the characters aren’t interesting to the average person. If you liked Bleach for any of those three reasons (or any other minor reasons), then you are in the absolute minority of nerds.

The cold, iron truth of economics is that you sell media properties in one of two ways: either by drilling down to a highly dedicated fanbase (e.g., moe-blob anime with extremely jacked-up Blu-ray prices) or by appealing to as wide and shallow an audience as possible (e.g., the Marvel Cinematic Universe). The interesting thing with Bleach is that those two audiences, by the numbers, are actually interested in the same thing: Ichigo and Rukia, and more particularly, IchiRuki.

Bold claim, I know. But you don’t have to look hard to see it. This is why the musicals were focused on them. This is why the LA movie was focused on them. And this is why both of those deemphasized other ancillary characters, especially Ichigo’s human friends like Chad—or Orihime: because they are essentially irrelevant to that largely singular fixture of the series and are forgettable other than to some hardcore nerd. (The only other thing that comes remotely close to being as iconic are the Soul Society fights, especially Ichigo vs. Byakuya.)

This is also why every time the property has been reinvented for a new market (again, e.g., the musical and the LA movie) the focus has always been on early Bleach: because it most showcases their interactions and establishes their foundational emotional connection. This is in large part why arcs that more and more deemphasized their interactions suffered increasingly worse sales, to the point that Bleach was consistently ranked 20th out of 20 in Weekly Shounen Jump’s ratings on a week-to-week basis. Less Ichigo and Rukia, and especially less Ichigo and Rukia together, means less sales. This is why TYBW and WDKALY sold abysmally, and I’m willing to bet that CFYOW’s numbers aren’t too great either considering it features neither of them at all.

This is furthermore why Studio Pierrot gave them so many moments, like the ice-skating and fireworks date that they used to send off the anime: because IchiRuki sells. And not much else does.

So, having established that, let’s talk about your idea.

Ichika and Kazui don’t make sense, because their existence in TYBW isn’t established. They simply appear, like the rest of the ending, with no buildup or explanation. In other words, there is no reason to invest in them as characters; they are simply designs walking and talking on a page. (And surprise, the only people who cared “about” them at all were people like you who were pleased as punch that it was evidence that Ichigo and Orihime, and Rukia and Renji, fucked. And even you lot don’t care about them, because there is nothing about them to possibly care about. You care about them as symbols and nothing more.)

However, what would make even less sense is to introduce them without having TYBW at all. For the anime to jump from Ichigo and Rukia having an ice rink not-date to having Ichika and Kazui running around in their places would be a bit like jumping from Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, to Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens in 1983, instead of having Return of the Jedi. It really isn’t possible to overstate how much that big of a leap would lose an audience, whose reactions would be, “What the fuck is this? What happened?”

As I have previously calculated, animating TYBW would take about 4–5 seasons and about 3–4 years of production. So, unless you wanted to pull one of the strangest continuations ever in media history, you’d be waiting for that to wrap first, and presuming its financial success (which is dubious, for the above outlined reasons, and its relative historical print failure which got the manga cancelled).

Setting all that aside, Ichika and Kazui are not photocopies of Rukia and Ichigo; they are genderflipped photocopies of Renji and Orihime. There is a reason why, despite the best efforts of IH here on Tumblr Dot Com, the IR community has never warmed up to them: why would you take a cheap clone knockoff that can’t even trace the original properly when you could just have the original? This will likewise hold true for a general audience. If a random-ass person in Japan knows anything at all about Bleach, it’ll be Ichigo and Rukia. Going, “This isn’t them, but here’s the same great taste but less filling!” is going to get you a response of, “No thanks.”

Setting that aside, what exactly would be the premise? The Espada were retconned in from the aether and people were fine with them, since they were basically just the inverse and mirror of the Shinigami. But people didn’t much care when Xcution were retconned in from the aether. And they didn’t like it when Yhwach and the Sternritter were retconned in from the aether. And they really don’t care now that Tokinada, Hikone, and Aura were retconned in from the aether. Are you really going to have a fifth group of baddies we never even vaguely heard of before showing up? Or are you going to just recycle a set? “Oh, no, Aizen has escaped Muken and has made the Super Fullbringer Espada…” Please. The concept is tapped out: it either has to keep inventing new bullshit and pretending it was always around, or it has to recycle the same ideas but in a less exciting way. Or it has to be rebooted.

It is clear that something or other is happening with regard to Bleach for this “anniversary” event, but the evidence, in my eyes, doesn’t match what you would see for TYBW being animated, let alone for some kind of Boruto-style series.

The event has been marketed in a rather low-key fashion, which is weird considering the 2020 Olympics are a once-in-a-generation event which provide the perfect hype vehicle (and which Shueisha has been using to push other WSJ properties). If you were working on a large or risky project, you’d want a lot of hype—either to prepare the audience, or to maximize your initial buy-in and returns if it’s going to flop (e.g., Anthem). Being cautious indicates both the scale and risk are small.

The emphasis on the voice actors who are appearing at the event are all for classic and popular characters: Ichigo, Byakuya, and now Rukia. You know what fans don’t like? Having a bait-and-switch pulled on them where their classic faves are affiliated with something, only for them to be radically deemphasized in the actual final product. (Just look at the three recent Star Wars movies for some proof of that one.) It is far more likely to be something focused around them.

MegaHouse is making new Bleach figurines this year. But the designs they’ve chosen so far are… Fake Karakura battle Armored Yoruichi (who I’m excited for), and Hueco Mundo style unreleased Grimmjow. If you were going to make merchandise for TYBW or a next-generation show, it’d make a lot more sense for that merch to be… actually related to those events, rather than “classic” designs, now wouldn’t it? To go to the Star Wars well again, they weren’t trying to sell Qui-Gon Jinn or Lando Calrissian toys with The Last Jedi.

To me, all the evidence indicates that whatever it is will be some sort of “Greatest Hits” OVA or something like that, with a focus on the Aizen era of the series. Maybe a lot of the “best” battles redone in really high quality. Maybe a video game. Maybe a reboot of the series from the start. Hard to say. But it doesn’t look an awful lot like TYBW, let alone a next-generation effort.

Now, I’m not saying that either of those things are impossible. I’ve been wrong before in this life (for example, I didn’t think Putin would invade Crimea), and I will be wrong again. I could be wrong about this too. I can only speak in probabilities.

But what I will say with confidence is that committing to TYBW would be fairly dumb as a business decision given everything that is evident about what makes Bleach sell.

And committing to a next-generation series at this stage before doing TYBW would be even dumber.

And doing a next-generation series without doing TYBW would be even dumber still.

Now, stupid people are in ascendancy worldwide in all kinds of endeavors, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that someone greenlit something so dumb. But if they did, I don’t think it’s going to do so hot.

So, good luck, I guess.

#Asks

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bygosscarmine · 4 years

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Guardian: The Great And Lonely God

or like any reasonable English-speaking fan would call it*

Goblin

*DramaBeans referred to it as The Lonely Shining Goblin, as usual tracking toward fandom needs with utter disregard for what official outlets say

an aesthete review

SPOILERS ABOUND BUT THERE IS NO CUT you know you’d scroll by without reading if you didn’t care anyway so it doesn’t matter

So. It feels like even longer ago that Goblin came out because there was so much lead-up hype, and also, a lot has happened in my life since January 2017. This is the first fresh Korean drama I’ve watched in possibly that long or longer. I picked it up in the last month or so because I’m studying Korean and wanted to reconnect with it in a more natural context. And I hadn’t forgotten that though there were issues in the story premise, and mixed reactions to it as it aired, I had wanted to see Gong Yoo in a drama like this really badly.

Looking at Gong Yoo’s filmography, I can see why I feel like he’s been in hardly any dramas. After Coffee Prince, which is one of the dramas that really sold me on Korean TV as particularly interesting) the only other project he’s done was Big. This was a drama that was also highly anticipated and panned by most of the reviewers I knew. I had loved him in Biscuit Teacher Star Candy the way one loves a particularly gifted actor in an early effort--he’s charismatic and pretty (and 26 though playing a teenager).

I’m sure preference comes into play with the weight of movies in his career, but also he’s a little less of a mutable person than some major players in drama. Try to imagine swapping him for Lee Dong Wook in roles, for instance. Lee Dong Wook can be playful or dead serious or just incredibly dumb, because in some ways he’s a clean slate. I’m not sure why this is true, but it enables him to move from secondary leads to lead and back again with a variety of characters.

Gong Yoo is in a class with Kim Sun-Ah or Hyun Bin: he can embody characters in ways that feel immediate and real, but there is a certain core to them that comes from his own person. It’s a strength, but one that requires a character to fit in a certain way.

The Goblin, fka Kim Shin, needs an acute actor who can carry off both the kind of inner intense conviction that would fuel a hero to the kind of death and rebirth the character suffers, as well as a softness and hopefulness that makes a love story work.

Even considering my bias, don’t think it’s too much to say Goblin works because of Gong Yoo's abilities in that regard.

While fantastic elements are fairly common in Korean dramas, getting a full-fledged fantasy that treats its fantastic elements with the sort of care a procedural would matters of law or a hospital drama would matters of medicine is not as wide-spread.

Goblin both creates a consistent world of fantasy and does not overdo answering questions. The important points are clear, the ambiguities are not plot-breaking. While in the case of what happens once the sword is pulled out, one of the rules does seem to be broken by the drama, for the most part, all promises are kept. I have my issues with Kim Shin continuing on in an immortal form when I think a normal human life span from here out could do (barring the fact that they force him to wait for another reincarnation) but this is me as a fantasy specialist critiquing a choice the writer made, not a point of the mythology not working.

The main sticking point of the drama for most critics is the age gap.

In a way, I’m not as bothered by age gaps when it comes to immortal beings--there’s not a huge difference between being 19 and 30 when your partner is 396, right?

I’m sure I’m not the first to say this, but the writer could have worked around this, and almost seems interested in doing so with the time-skip--only to have their second lifetime meeting also happen when she’s in high school.

I’m at a college right now and I’m 33 with a lot of classmates who are between 18 and 21. They are having adult relationships, but in real life I do give a look askance when the dude seems much older. And younger than 19 is really young.

If 29 was a fine time for them to be together in the end, with a much more intimate relationship, how long does Kim Shin wait the second time around?

Anyway, let the man die and come back as the same age, is what I’m trying to tell you.

Overall, the writing did a good job of allowing our heroine to be her age, and the romance to develop according to her pace. If there hadn’t been a second advent of her as a teenager in his life, with his years still running on ad infinitum, it would have seemed fine.

The fact that Ji Eun Tak, Goblin’s Bride, is a sort of classic Cinderella figure could have been an issue, too. However, I felt like she was given a lot of dimension so I rarely remembered that she was embodying a trope. Her clear memories and relationship with her mother help with that--she may live with uncaring relatives, but she has known herself to be loved and that centers her.

I also liked that her will was so important. In the back and forth between her and Kim Shin before it’s truly established that she is his destined bride, she gets to make choices about her relationship with him and while he withholds information a good deal of that is to allow her more choice.

This is a deployment of fate that feels full-bodied--the fate isn’t just something determined from the outside, even though we hear the voice of the gods in the actual narrative. Because of who these people are, they choose what has been predicted for them.

And the story is largely from her point of view, even as Kim Shin’s perspective and history shape so much of the plot. Her obsession with candles takes over the house Goblin and Reaper share, so at the end, Reaper has candles in his room. Her relationships are what center the story so much that the reminder that Deok Hwa doesn’t know her yet comes as a surprise before AND after the memory wipe. Everyone else connects in spokes around her--even Kim Shin and the Grim Reaper have to find their friendship footing around her status between them, where before they were just odd roommates.

What Ji Eun Tak wants is very important to this story, even when it is initially denied to her.

She is the only one who says no to the tea of forgetting, and gets no word of argument or explanation from her Reaper.

Altogether, I really enjoyed this show. Even the ending (which I had gotten vibes about that warned me of disappointment) which I didn’t love made sense in the logic of the rest of the story, including its failures.

It was a beautifully shot series, though with erratic editing in some of the chapters, and the intensity of the storyline carried off the high drama that might otherwise have turned maudlin.

If I were to watch it again, I’d be tempted to skip the last part of the last episode, leaving it in my mind that Kim Shin finally grew old, that by suffering his absence without memory was enough heroic suffering for Ji Eun Tak, and that when Reaper has done his duty and escorted Sunny into the afterlife they all come back together as childhood friends in a Reply 2079 reboot story.

...At the same time, the time inversions of the opening matching up with the first and last episode are pretty sweet, and I wouldn’t have missed that little bit of clever resonance just for a less messy headcanon version.

#Goblin #Guardian #kdrama #The Great and Lonely God #korean drama #review #spoilers #Goblin spoilers #Guardian spoilers

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