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I just don't think "being the strongest" or "the strongest is lonely" or "love and being the strongest" are interesting or even particularly coherent concepts as gege writes about them, so the fact that this is apparently what really really interests him as we near the end is underwhelming
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Oct 6, 2023 14:14
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Zzulu posted:That's exactly what Sukuna thinks as well. He just said the whole conversation is dumb, which is why I like him. sure, but 20+ chapters of your super cool lead villain going "this conversation is dumb and boring" will just lead me to agree that it is dumb and boring. I'm ready for the next beat.
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Oct 6, 2023 16:37
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Conspiratiorist posted:I think there's some missing the forest for the trees going on. JJK has been about self-realization - in whatever form this might take - from day one, and most of the introduced incarnated sorcerers were extremely powerful individuals during their own time who nevertheless found themselves looking for greater strength and/or meaning, and in Gojo's case he had been cursed with the question of what strength means for his identity posed to him by Geto at the end of Hidden Inventory. my problem isn't the stuff about reaching enlightenment/self-actualization, and obviously yuji's dying surrounded by friends thing makes him a clear philosophical foil to sukuna in this respect, since sukuna achieves enlightenment through absolute egoism while yuji's vision of a fulfilled life means friendship which inevitably means caring for others and their needs. the problem is that strength doesn't mean anything. Valentin fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Oct 6, 2023 |
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Oct 6, 2023 19:48
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Bread Set Jettison posted:Sukuna must have 2 wieners and 4 balls sukuna, su-ku-na. twelve stories high made of radiation. the present beware, the future beware, he's coming, he's coming, he's coming.
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Oct 6, 2023 21:02
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I would say the actual interesting thing MHA did was briefly allow the protagonist's designated evil foil to straight up be the focus of the manga for a while, putting him and his crew in a more traditional underdog situation and turning them into the protagonists for a sizable chunk of chapters. this sympathetic framing continued pretty much through sad man's parade but has dropped off sharply in some respects. at the time, i think a not-uncommon feeling was that the arc was intended to demonstrate that the villains had their own heroic qualities and that they had been consistently marginalized by an unjust society, possibly hinting towards a finale for the comic that involved confronting the deep-rooted injustices in the comic's vision of superhero japan. personally, i'm unsure if the truth is that horikoshi gave up on an interesting framing due to poor reception. he has definitely altered the timing and execution of some subplots, but imo it seems more likely that the truth is that the arc in question accidentally made the villains in question more sympathetic than the author intended, their arc was always to fall apart due to palpatine's machinations despite their weak but growing understanding of the power of friendships, and the more bog-standard ending we seem to be headed towards was always the goal. to bring it back around i think a real commonality between MHA and JJK was a fan perception (which wasn't based on nothing) that each story was going to upend certain tropes that certain segments of fandom are vocally tired of. But here we are and MHA offscreened the destruction of the evil assassination-based cabal that ran the government lol and JJK did in fact have its superstrong mentor go out against the big villain while (arguably) permanently weakening them and passing the torch to the next era. a real difference, on the other hand, is that each work is weird about women in idiosyncratic and exciting ways. Valentin fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Oct 12, 2023 |
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Oct 12, 2023 20:37
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very confused what tone everyone is reading into that because it sounds mostly like two people lightly and humorously criticizing jjk's perceived sexism w/r/t marginalizing female characters, in this case nobara
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Oct 15, 2023 20:24
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i believe in takaba. he will make 100 percent of the audience laugh and pigs will fly.
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Nov 2, 2023 17:05
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i haven't read the chapter. takaba should become evil through the power of friendship. this will mean he is present at a grand final melee feat. him, kenjaku, and sukuna versus all. this will enable sukuna's defeat when he is unable to master comedic combat because he cannot and does not care to comprehend others. kenjaku then turns good through the power of friendship and manzai comedy.
Valentin fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Nov 18, 2023 |
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Nov 18, 2023 08:30
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Feeling like it's probably not gonna get better in this finale than kenjaku's buddy comedy routine because nothing interesting is allowed to happen when sukuna is present, but that's such a high high I'm okay with that
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Dec 13, 2023 23:07
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basically all of this is because sukuna is written to be boring as hell. The comedy bit was solid not just because it was better plotted and more conceptually interesting but because kenjaku is a character that can actually engage with the world around him. it wouldn't matter if you actually stuck sukuna in the trial for a lengthy amount of time, because there's no way you'd get anything but a staunch refusal to engage. the only interesting thing he's doing is not engaging yuji, which is to say the most interesting thing about him at the moment is what he's not doing. also his attacks don't even look cool. his hair? wack. his gear? wack. his jewelr e: also it's the height of authorial flailing to have sukuna declare right before he kills a guy "wow maybe this is....the only guy as good as me??" that is not how you successfully recover investment after your twelve chapter megafight ended in a sad trombone noise Valentin fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 01:22
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an actual hurricane would be substantially more interesting as the manga's final villain, because it would no longer be possible to pretend that merely being a hurricane lent it depth or meaning
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Dec 28, 2023 01:39
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the problem with sukuna is that he's systematically eliminating possibilities for surprising or unexpected turnarounds and we're being left with "it's time for yuji to finally show off his power ups and go head to head with sukuna and get into what exactly is the deal there" but like. we've been heading there forever. I have been waiting for this particular fireworks factory for ages but all we are doing at this point boils down to watching sukuna loudly reiterate that this can only end at the fireworks factory. we haven't really delved into his beliefs and he remains largely the same dude he was at "stand proud, you were strong." which was a cool villain to anticipate fighting over 100 chapters ago! but we have bled this dead horse dry. much like a paul hollywood handshake, I've seen sukuna offer a begrudging respect to so many opponents that it's losing interest or meaning. it was a cool and iconic moment with jogo, it was an expected beat in the context of gojo losing, it was boring with kashimo, and it's just nothing at this point. Valentin fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 19:27
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this is the easiest thing to understand in the world. gojo is hexproof. you can't kill him with swords to plowshares but you can with wrath of god.
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Dec 30, 2023 21:21
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people often want big systemic thread/site culture explanations for why discourse or fan reception is different in different places and it's (understandably) tempting to look for an answer for it in the things people say, but the truth is that people tend to like things or dislike things before they form their opinions. the best you can usually say is that people tend to like things they think are executed well and dislike things they think are executed poorly, and their evaluation of each element of a work is usually interconnected with other elements. gojo's death is a great example of it because there's lots of reasons to think it was executed well and lots of reasons to think it wasn't, all of which connect closely to other parts of the manga (and how you evaluate them). every commenter is just going to have a subset of those reasons that matter to them the most that inform their ultimate opinion, and they will only rarely be aware of all the opinions that hold and how they relate to each other, so trying to divine meaning or a rule about what people do or don't like from the face of posts alone will always be an arduous endeavor. anyways all this is part of why gojo is an unenlightened moron who died, because effortless or even only moderately difficult understanding is a fake idea.
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Jan 2, 2024 22:50
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I mean most other long running shonen don't kill half their cast and suddenly drop their protagonist out of focus, is I think the idea. Tho funnily Naruto's "this sucks now" point for many was choosing to undo killing everyone Shibuya-style. Nearest equivalent I can think of readily is maybe HxH? Chainsaw Man has superficial similarities but isn't really comparable at all.
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Jan 5, 2024 21:41
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Conspiratiorist posted:The JJK main characters were always Yuji/Megumi/Gojo/Sukuna. I'm so glad to continue to learn about my favorite main character, megumi, who contributes so much to this manga and is definitely still alive(??)
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Jan 5, 2024 21:58
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I think the csm comparison is extremely instructive because it highlights how much of the difficulty is the length of real world serialization. almost the entirety of chainsaw man part 1 could have taken place since the culling game started (if my math is right, this week's chapter corresponds to the chapter where denji is launched into and then returns from space during the hybrid fight). csm is a tightly paced action horror thriller. jjk is a long-running shonen battle manga and accordingly must spend its time much differently. Like, the gojo/sukuna fight alone is not only three times as long chapter-wise as any CSM fight, it's as long as the entire reze arc. if you're comparing the moments where JJK and CSM blew up their casts and then kept rolling, aki was confirmed dead on 7/5/20 and CSM part 1 was over by December 14 of the same year, with a complete narrative and thematic payoff to everything that happened, such that the appearance of PART 1 END in the final panel was a genuine surprise to many. On the other hand, the last shibuya incident chapter (of fifty-three) was January 2021 and we are still waiting for the punchline. gege very obviously always intended to blow up his setting, but people expect a payoff when you do something like that. So far, we're still waiting, especially after the return of gojo also failed to pay off much. Valentin fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Jan 6, 2024 |
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Jan 6, 2024 21:20
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UnderFreddy posted:also why would Todo be around. Just to sound smart while they're discussing? Man can't fight anymore because that's his brother?? because he won't let him feel alone again??? have you no heart Valentin fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Jan 7, 2024 |
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Jan 7, 2024 18:04
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beyond general sidelining and fridging concerns, it's worth noting that "standard shonen trio but the girl has a cool ability and gets fights" was definitely a necessary selling point for getting some people into jjk, so it's not surprising they get annoyed when that doesn't quite pan out
Valentin fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Jan 11, 2024 |
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Jan 10, 2024 23:57
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I like hakari a lot but as someone who started during gojo/sukuna, getting to him was like the ultimate punchline on the "ACTUALLY jjk's power system has very THOROUGH and DETAILED mechanics" line of praise you often see. plenty of jjk's abilities straight up don't make sense (projection sorcery is another big easy example here). they don't need to, it's shonen, all that matters is that the fight reversals and turnarounds make emotional sense, and well defined powers are just scaffolding to help you get there, much like star trek technobabble.* but it was really really funny to get to "idk I roll jackpots" guy while everyone was raving about domain expansions etc *(which is why "funniest option wins" is actually a great power set for shonen. Also I think the tension and catharsis inherent to comedy play really well with shonen rhythms but I can't pull that full thought together here) Valentin fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Jan 16, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 02:44
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JahRoo posted:Hakari's first real fight shows off the limits of his bullshit godmode power and he's able to get out of it through clever application of the other core mechanics of the story, namely 1) using the barrier aspect of domain expansion to dump kashimo in the water and 2) using a binding vow to avoid certain death when kashimo blows everything up. I mean, yeah, "he used the 'do anything you want that vaguely makes sense at an appropriate emotional/narrative cost' power" is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. I don't think it's at all bad, quite the opposite! But it's not nearly as rigorous as many fans believe (to its benefit). e: another great example of a core mechanic that is putatively rigorous that is obviously nonsense calvinball is black flash, which is straight up "sometimes you land a crit and it changes your life" in a way that is honestly beautiful and hilarious Valentin fucked around with this message at 08:14 on Jan 16, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 06:04
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I think it would be very silly to spend all this time on the thing in question and not do anything with it, but if nothing comes of it I'll just assume that gege just didn't want to have to think about where anyone's body landed and trying to draw it into future background shots.
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Jan 17, 2024 18:06
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hm. Wanted to wait for these scans to see how I felt but I think this kind of turn in sukuna is really not all that interesting to me and I don't think it's really been earned. Though it is funny that he too is very "oh. okay. that's it?" at higuruma's death.
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Jan 18, 2024 20:43
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most shonen lore/setting cruft (which I assume is what's meant here by "framework") is meaningless when divorced from its creator. e.g. the Buddhist influences and the way they've been implemented narratively and aesthetically, the art and paneling, the way fights are written and portrayed (and what that means), that's the real interesting stuff in JJK. the power system and setting are nothing, it's jojo stands stapled to naruto chakra and also they're ghostbusting. which is totally fine, they exist to serve the story, but if you think they're interesting there's ten thousand things out there near enough to them as makes no difference. the main boring thing about the "sorcerers only in Japan" thing imo is that its tied to tengen and we're just still waiting on the narrative payoff for tengen.
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Jan 22, 2024 19:53
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jujutsu society is great. gege didn't want to deal with it in any real detail so he furrowed his brow real hard and said "they're lead by...the higher-ups" and sure, gege, go off.
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Jan 24, 2024 21:01
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the 24 fps idea is neat but falls apart due to the bit about applying to other people highlighting how little sense it makes. if it was just a question of naobito planning his movements it'd be like okay sure he plans these movements but adding the whole "other people also have to preplan and stick to the script" makes me try to parse out what "planning" and "selecting" and "not performing" a movement are (and what like, a frame or movement even is) and the whole thing becomes a mess
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Jan 27, 2024 22:07
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king crimson makes ten thousand percent more sense, I'm sorry.
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Jan 27, 2024 22:08
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:"You force everyone to animate their movements. If its not smooth they get hurt" okay and what does that mean what is smooth and how does one smoothly jump between 24 locked positions Valentin fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Jan 29, 2024 |
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Jan 29, 2024 03:56
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yeah the shift was not "oh there are chants and hand signs?" it's the part where like black flash they provide a video game style buff
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Feb 2, 2024 21:15
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LuiCypher posted:Eh, it's not a video game-style buff. Any martial artist can tell you what it's like to be "in the zone", aka that heightened state of focus and awareness that anticipates the Black Flash and how once you're in it you can pull off poo poo you never even thought possible. JJK has a not-insignificant amount of martial arts in it (quite a few characters even specialize in it!) and so that's also a concept that needs very little explanation to a domestic audience. I mean sure but it says 120% on the page and it explicitly does ^2.5 damage. the concept whatever sure (we all know what flow is lol) but the way gege writes it in the narration leans on power levels weirdly. He does the same thing in 223 where he's like "with chanting utahime used 120% of her power!! And when gojo did it with hollow purple it made it a 200% hollow purple!!!!" I just find it a weird and kind of stupefying way to frame things. e: and look obviously it's in the tradition of the kaioken and gege has explicitly been like "I'm bad at math and it sounds cool". But no one ever tries to sell you on the rigor and deep planning of DBZ's combat framework. I think for me it's precisely because gege is capable of writing engaging fights without any of this stuff that I roll my eyes so hard at it. I think JJK is very interesting when characters are straightforwardly engaging with each other and very lame when "being the strongest" gets treated like a power scaling thing and there's an implied level of quantification. Sukuna and Gojo trying to outmaneuver and overpower each other is cool, but "wow sukuna tanked a 200% hollow purple!" is not. that means nothing. something about the way gege writes some of it strips all mysticism or interest out of it for me, even if you can analogize some of it back to fighting "normally". like yeah I get it if sukuna's ability to throw a million jabs and also stiff-arm you while also planting his feet and winding up for a haymaker is an obstacle our heroes must overcome, that's great. adding numbers to the haymaker just muddles it up. Valentin fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Feb 2, 2024 |
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Feb 2, 2024 21:23
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this owns. the katanas in the floor bit is good every time.
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Feb 9, 2024 07:33
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ImpAtom posted:This fight is fine and all but "Unlimited Blade Works : Copy Edition" doesn't really strike me as the coolest/most unique fight scene in a manga that usually has quite a few. I feel like I'm missing something that makes this stand out. Maybe I'm just a bit disappointed in the 'empty field full of swords' visual since I was hoping for something more distinct for the domain expansion. i think this is pretty true but i think it also actually contributes to the positive response. a lot of the domain expansions are either visually impressive but don't have a lot going on imo, or are just "here's the fight's gimmick," or they're hakari's DE and they're perfect and beautiful and good. yuta's DE shifts the fight into a different phase like pretty much all expansions have, but it also sets easily understandable stakes for the fight (each katana has a technique, each breaks after one use, the ability to grab the right one at the right time is key, there might be a part where yuta creating distance to grab the right sword matters) and leaves easy, properly set-up space for surprising reversals (no indication as to which technique is in which sword), and instead of fighting in abstract empty space or somewhere totally new the level just shifted to final destination. it sets things up cleanly for a nice straightforward slobberknocker in a way i think people want. Valentin fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Feb 9, 2024 |
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Feb 9, 2024 19:07
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feel very bad for gege, who just from reading this is clearly not doing okay in terms of workflow whether for physical health or burnout reasons, but seems loathe to take a break for understandable reasons
Valentin fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Mar 1, 2024 20:17
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yeah I think tonally it would have hit better as "sukuna's cursed energy is ebbing to more normal levels, but you'll find he becomes even more dangerous when pressed, and also combat isn't a cursed energy measuring contest and he has vastly more experience in fights than anyone here" rather than "no he's actually still got a TON you guys are just LAME"
Valentin fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Mar 1, 2024 20:57
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Very funny this thread has spent months going "When is sukuna gonna uses his powers we've only seen part of?" And then doom posts about how bad it is when a character says "Oh he's got some more tricks left up his sleeves". that's the closing line. this is the exchange being discussed and it is extremely tediously straightforward: Hakari: Sukuna's cursed energy is taking a real nosedive. Uraume: You know not the caprices of Sukuna. If his interest in his opponent is tenuous, so too will be the waves of cursed energy. i know nothing makes you happier than riding into a thread to do this routine but take your own advice and read the actual lines
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Mar 1, 2024 21:39
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the rundown is that in 250 we hear sukuna's thoughts directly and he says that post-gojo he has only about as much CE in reserve as yuji, and also that every time yuji hits him it disrupts his CE output. this comes in the middle of yuji and yuta doing a pretty good job doing their best to hit him with everything they've got, and since then he took a cleave and jacob's ladder to the face, some number of soul-disrupting punches, and a stab to the heart from the magic "unblockable soul damage" super special cursed katana. in this chapter, hakari echoes the viewing audience: hey, sukuna's CE is decreased after fighting gojo and his output is down, his cleaves and dismantles seem weaker than against gojo or kashimo, he has an open heart wound, probably he's losing! uraume very explicitly and directly says "no lol he's actually just not really trying yet and you should take his cursed energy output as a reflection of his interest and not how much gas he has left," which sukuna echoes and the framing and cliffhanger appear to confirm. it's clearly intended as a fight beat showing our heroes unexpectedly in peril after what felt like a successful offensive and a surprise attack the narration explicitly called out as an unexpectedly sloppy mistake on sukuna's end. it is supposed to read as a reversal of what is already known. it should be surprising and impressive that he's still walking around with a giant hole in his heart! the fact that it's possible to be like "this just seems like what we already knew" is part of what's landing wrong about it. i'd be most impressed tbh if this fell as flat as every other cliffhanger in the fight to date but somehow i don't see that happening. Valentin fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Mar 1, 2024 22:28
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that is pretty much irrelevant to the point being made but yes it is a different arbitrarily high number
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Mar 1, 2024 23:29
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from a booking perspective I will simply not be satisfied if he dies without going all out. I also do not think gege would make that mistake, which is good, but the longer this goes in this vein, the more difficult it becomes to envision a route where sukuna goes all out and his loss is still satisfying.
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Mar 4, 2024 23:09
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ImpAtom posted:I mean he had Gojo get cut in half offscreen and had the magic insta-kill sword just fizzle out uselessly. Anticlimax is not off the menu. i don't really buy that those anticlimaxes are themselves indicative of where the story is going, because i think they largely serve to intensify whatever will ultimately occur. gojo sorta had to be offscreened because getting to his death was turning into a final arc worthy effort in itself. kenjaku's stuff should presumably be picked back up when the merger finally happens too but i will say i wouldn't have minded getting more about his backstory then and didn't love how abrupt that end was even if i liked the entire fight building toward it. still, though, i think the post-shibuya manga has intentionally denied a lot of traditionally satisfying narrative beats in part because it's going to end fairly traditionally. that said if gege's goal is to write the japanese homestuck and go full anti-genre meta anticlimax i will honor him all my days
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Mar 5, 2024 00:15
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Lamebot posted:Good fundamentals kusakabe's scrappy, has high jujutsu iq, and is sneakily athletic. scouts have also noted his cerebral fighting style.
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Mar 7, 2024 19:56
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