Ottservia

A little late on this but this actually would’ve worked a lot better and made Berkut actually mean something instead of you know being dumb, pointless, and thematically inconsistent

I wouldn’t call it a myth. The primary audience of gacha games are straight male Otaku living in Japan. Not to say female Otaku don’t exist but that’s their core demographic. From what I recall IS has stated most of their revenue comes from Japan while most of the users are from overseas. So it kind of shows what demographic they want to primarily market towards.

You know it really is quite the day when I’m actually agreeing with Jotari over something

It’s because the story does a very poor job of presenting those ideas because Alm IS always right by the logic of the narrative. He never really faces any real consequences. The only one being him killing his own father. And even that event is not presented as his fault. My issue with Alm is that none of bad situations he gets into are his fault or at the very least it’s never presented as such. If we go by the dialogue by the end of the game Alm’s character flaw is supposed to be reflective of Duma. It’s his recklessness and unwillingness to find other solutions outside of bloodshed. This is fine but that flaw never goes anywhere beyond just unknowingly killing his father. And not to discredit that moment or anything but the story doesn’t do anything else with that flaw. Its a flaw that’s supposed to help him foil Berkut but that conflict is so laughably one sided and contradictory. Alm for the majority of the narrative is framed as a static protagonist as seen with the whole thing with Clive and saving Delthea as well as early on with Lukas and saving Silque. But then all of a sudden they want you to think he’s a dynamic character all along with a character flaw that was never really there. like the flaw the story wants to get across is completely at odds with his characterization. By Contrast when Celica does something stupid it makes sense for her characterization because she was already established as a naive and not so confident person. It’s her self-doubt that leads her to make these mistakes. She’s overly naive and pacifistic. Alm is supposed to be the opposite. He’s supposed to be headstrong, reckless, and stubborn. But he’s never characterized that way. I mean he does have those traits but they’re marginally more subdued than they should be. SoV is a story about duality and how the flaws of Duma and Mila’s ideals on their own bring their countries to ruin. It’s in the marriage of those two ideals that valentia can truly prosper. Duma says as much with his final words right before he is sealed away. Alm and Celica’s character arcs are supposed to be reflective of that which is the reason they are dual protagonists. Problem is though that Alm doesn’t reflect the flaws of Duma’s ideals at all.

I only know for a fact it was Kishimoto who drew it because I know Kishimoto’s artstyle when I see it. If you read a man’s manga for 700 chapters you really begin to pick up on those sorts of things. It definitely wasn’t Ikemoto that’s for sure and thank god for that. But yeah the life of a weekly mangaka is certainly a special kind of hell. I mean I barely paid attention during those episodes. Hell, I only really watched one and a half of them so I don’t have much to comment on that. From my understanding, he’s fully taken control of the ship in that he’s the one writing the writing the script now not just overseeing it. Honestly I thought he’d take a longer break after Samurai 8 but I suppose you can’t keep an artist from his craft for very long.

You know speaking of the director of the Boruto anime. Hiroyuki Yamashita has stated he wanted to work on the Guy vs Madara fight in the anime but couldn’t because he was too busy with the Boruto movie and it shows because the production values during that section of the anime were beyond sub par. Are you referring to the scarlet springs arc? Cause that wasn’t a light novel but rather a one volume mini story that Kishimoto drew and wrote. I mean from my understanding the manga is worked on by two people. The writer Ukyo Kadachi and Ikemoto who does the art with Kishimoto supervising the whole thing(how much influence he actually had though is up to interpretation). Though now Kishimoto himself has taken over writing for the Boruto manga after the cancellation of Samurai 8. So yeah the boruto series has a lot of shit going on behind the scenes.

Funnily enough the substitute shinigami arc is probably my least favorite arc of Bleach personally. It’s still a good arc cause personally there is no arc of Bleach that I actually dislike but it’s just the arc that had me the least engaged overall. I mean to be pedantic the stuff from episodes 480-500 of the shippuden anime weren’t filler but rather adaptations of three of the tie in novels that came out after the manga ended. As for the filler in the latter stretch of the war arc itself, they were working on two Naruto movies at the time(The last and Boruto). Though that doesn’t excuse just how disorganized perriot is at any rate. Regardless though, having just reread Naruto the war arc is probably tied with the pain arc for my favorite arc of the series but that’s just me. I don’t think that’s a desire to avoid “filler” as it is just a franchise thing cause dragon ball super is handled in the exact same way. In that the anime and manga happen concurrently and are both considered canon even though they can be pretty different. Because the Naruto anime was a direct adaptation of the manga where as the Boruto anime started at around the exact same time as the manga and was likely planned that way from the start for the sake of business and marketing.

So over the past few months I’ve been rereading the big 3 as in Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach. And honestly it’s been a blast revisiting these series in manga form. I have fallen in love with them all over again and enjoying moments I never really cared for previously. The amount of talent and dedication Kishimoto, Oda, and Kubo put into these manga is just astonishing. I had really forgotten just how good each of these series really were. It’s also shown me just how padded out their anime adaptations really are like christ I knew Naruto had a lot of filler but dear lord some of those early episodes are really padded to hell with unnecessary scenes and flashbacks. But still, it’s been a lot of fun going back to these old series again.

I saw it I just couldn’t figure out a proper way to respond and by the time I would have I forgot about it. You have no idea how much sao is hated amoung the larger anime community. Undeservedly so I might add because while yes it is flawed in some areas the later seasons are genuinely great stories with a lot of interesting ideas. It’s just hard to recommend because the first season has a lot of let’s just say undesirable elements. Fairy dance especially

Good because SAO and DBZ are great and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise of that fact(okay well SAO only gets good after season 1 but you know we don’t talk about season 1 especially because progressive exists and is much better).

In a case like this it’s best to look at the specific kana/kanji used as well as the context of the conversation as a whole to really understand the intent. Japanese is a pretty context sensitive language after all

I mean yeah that is the point. It’s just the execution is worse than chapter 15 of conquest and chapter 15 of conquest is garbage

On the topic of Berkut, if you read developer interviews, Kusakihara has gone on record to explicitly state that Berkut is supposed to be a foil to Alm. The whole idea being that Berkut is what Alm could’ve been had he been raised in Rigel. And if that was legitimately what they were going for, then they failed miserably at it. I’m made the Naruto comparison before and yeah it’s a completely unfair comparison but I can’t understand how anyone could read that manga and not even pick up the basics of how to write an effective foil relationship. Alm and Berkut’s relationship is just so shallow and one sided it’s pathetic. The key to writing a good foil relationship is to make the characters be as similar as possible while seeming completely different. if the whole idea is that Berkut is what Alm could’ve been, then we should have seen that parallel. We should’ve seen Alm act like Berkut in some ways. Have him have that same air of arrogance or whatever. The point of a foil relationship is to use similarities to highlight differences. And it’s those very differences that help develop both characters and create more meaningful conflict between them. Problem is Alm and Berkut are nothing alike and the most their conflicts amount to is that he keeps whining that he’s constantly losing to a peasant that isn’t actually a peasant but is in fact his cousin. If the the intention was to create a proper foil relationship, then they failed utterly.

You know if it was just the damsel in distress then it wouldn’t bother me so much because this is a remake of 1991 famicom game. Most video game stories around that time just amounted rescuing the princess or whatever. So I can forgive the damsel in distress stuff. What I can’t forgive is everything else. First, let’s talk about Faye. She was added to the game to give Alm’s army more female representation. She’s also the only female character you recruit on Alm’s path that isn’t a damsel in distress. Which on its own it’s actually great. It adds a female on Alm’s side that doesn’t fall into that somewhat sort of problematic pattern. But then you realize all her character amountts to is Literally just her obsessive love with the protagonist and nothing else. And combined with damsel in distress bullshit that just makes it even worse. And don’t even get me started on Rinea. A literal piece of cardboard whose soul purpose is to humanize Berkut. Which on its own would be fine in a vacuum. But they just had to do it in the most sexist way imaginable. They don’t develop their relationship enough for me to believe for second that she has any reason to forgive him when he literally sacrifices her for the sake of his own ego. That whole scene is just gross to me. and that’s not even getting into how poorly the narrative treats Celica. She constantly makes stupid decisions which results in needing to be saved by a man in the end. Again if it was just the damsel in distress shit it wouldn’t bother me but then you combine that with all of this bullshit and it’s really not a good look.

You’re missing my point. It’s not the fact that she’s a damsel that bothers me. It’s the fact that one route that allows you to understand her character better and is supposed to flesh out her character more has her as a Damsel in Distress for like 60% of the game. It doesn’t feel like her and Byleth’s relationship is based in mutual trust and understanding(like BylethxEdelgard is) but rather just that you saved the hot dragon milf. She’s not really much of a character in SS. More of a trophy for beating Edelgard if anything. Though take my words with a grain of salt because it’s been a while since I’ve even thought about touching 3H. It is better than how SoV handles its female cast I will give it that though. Cause oh boy is SoV very mysoginistic in its treatment of its female characters. And I’m not just talking the damsels in distress either. If it were just the damsels in distress then there wouldn’t be an issue. It’s everything in conjunction with the damsel in distress nonsense that make this game the problematic mess that it is