|
Shibuya is honestly one of the best Shonen arcs of all time and easily the highest point of JJK so far.
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 20:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 20:27 |
|
|
RevolverDivider posted:Shibuya is honestly one of the best Shonen arcs of all time and easily the highest point of JJK so far. yeah the fights have been interwoven and integrated with some fantastic emotional beats. as much as every episode is 80% fight scene there's been a ton of character work and drama too, it's very impressive when often one gets sacrificed for the other. genuinely one of the best shounen arcs i've seen, it's insane how good this is ninjewtsu fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Dec 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 21:01
|
|
|
Popo posted:Meimei was right to flee and I hate that her character will be forever stained not because she was smart/conniving enough to flee (characters don't have to be moral to be good) but because Gege inflicted Uiui on us. You can almost sense MAPPA not being a fan either, making the bed roughly 40 feet wide. Meimei’s never been presented in a good light, she’s only cared about money to a ridiculous degree, and we even saw earlier this arc how she was willing to sacrifice Uiui, and how glad he was to do it. While Nanami fought and died to the very end because of what he believed was right, Meimei bolted to where Nanami wanted to retire, raped her brother, and did some insider trading. It ties into what Gojo and others in this thread have said, Jujutsu Sorcerer society is completely rotten top-to-bottom, and you almost have to be screwed up in the head to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 21:43
|
|
|
The weird bit with the two in bed felt like it could have been completely cut out, just skip to her saying she sold all her japanese assets, and absolutely nothing would have been lost Just kind of a bizarre and uncomfortable thing to throw in there
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 21:54
|
|
|
pork never goes bad posted:There's plenty of negativity in the thread too (ie from me!) - it's not just that Nobara got her skull blown open though that's pretty egregious, but the whole thing feels sorta like a rug pull to me. I wanted more S1, I got a different show that sidelined the cool female protag. I've been more mixed on S2 from the beginning of Hidden Inventory, but my opinion has steadily crystallized into a negative one over the course of the season. I got a similar experience. I really enjoyed S1 so I was really onboard S2 at first (the young Gojo chapters were good) but then it became a very different show to what I expected and it honestly isn't very good. So I went ahead and read the manga to see if things get better and lol, no. Not even close.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 22:04
|
|
|
I sort of sensed hosed up poo poo was happening between her and UiUi, considering he was VERY effusive in praising her and willing to die for her. That went beyond the weird sister-complexes in anime.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 22:32
|
|
|
I think having that gross out scene makes her someone to be clearly loathed rather than an a cool yet indifferent money grubbing mercenary without her outright betraying the protagonists.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 23:19
|
|
|
Coulda just shown her kicking a puppy if that's all it amounts to
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 23:34
|
|
|
It’s been a weird discourse around season 2. Shibuya was seen as one of the best arcs in shonen in the manga and the anime for its part has only elevated it. But then I see complaints about killing off characters from anime only people and stuff about there being nonstop fights ( which season 1 was as well, just back to back fights) and it’s a very different reaction to the same story being told. I’m just really confused at the conversation around it all. Maybe it’s just certain circles throwing up the issues and the complaints are insulated . I know amongst the general people who don’t engage in online discourse, they’re all loving it
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 23:34
|
|
|
as mentioned earlier, Mei Mei is supposed to be the foil to Nanami. They’re only similar in that they’re both physical combat based fighters. Nanami is all about self-sacrifice to protect the young, while Mei Mei exploits her younger brother. Nanami dies fighting to the last breath while Mei Mei immediately turns tail at the first hint of danger. She even teleports to the place Nanami wanted to retire to in Malaysia.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 00:29
|
|
|
Lamebot posted:I think having that gross out scene makes her someone to be clearly loathed rather than an a cool yet indifferent money grubbing mercenary without her outright betraying the protagonists. Yeah, there’s a difference between an awful girlboss and someone who’s truly vile, and the creators want you to know which one Meimei is.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 00:51
|
|
|
Asuron posted:It’s been a weird discourse around season 2. S1 had, IMO, a very good balance between the light hearted and the serious stuff, which I greatly enjoyed. S2 is just generally dour, which is neither good nor bad by itself, but it's not what I was expecting. Fights are excellent in both seasons but the feeling of the fights is different, if that makes any sense.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 01:29
|
|
|
Thinking about Miwa's binding vow: it must suck to learn you had no future potential to sacrifice to begin with.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 01:33
|
|
|
As messed up as he was for taking the deal in the first place, Mechamaru was right. His team, barring Todo, just isn't strong enough to survive the chaos of Shibuya that night. They all would have died QUICKLY.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 01:36
|
|
|
Pan Dulce posted:As messed up as he was for taking the deal in the first place, Mechamaru was right. His team, barring Todo, just isn't strong enough to survive the chaos of Shibuya that night. They all would have died QUICKLY. Really the only reason anyone is alive is because Jogo lost to Sukuna. If Jogo had survived that or not encountered Itadori, I don’t think anyone would have lived, as no one in Shibuya would have survived him until Yuki.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 02:03
|
|
|
Lamebot posted:Thinking about Miwa's binding vow: it must suck to learn you had no future potential to sacrifice to begin with. Eh, the problem is that she kind of wasn't all that attached to it anyway, she just kind of picked it up within the last few years when she became a sorcerer because that's what she happened to have some aptitude in. Giving it up had no real meaning attached to it, and thus it didn't result in much.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 02:30
|
|
|
Asuron posted:It’s been a weird discourse around season 2. I didn't care very much for the top half of Season 1. It turned me with the second half. The interaction between the students of the different schools offered me a bunch of characters I was interested in seeing grow and change. And it capped it with the big three as presented by the season getting an absolutely incredible moment where they completely gently caress up three special grades. Then it turns out that everyone you saw there. Jobbers. Almost all of them are pointless. To the point that everyone in one of the schools is told, "Stay on the sidelines because you're losers." And then show just Yamchas the female lead. So we just sit and watch well animated fight after well animated fight with a bunch of people we have no investment in throwing poo poo at each other whilst an old lady tells us plot points like I'm watching the Chimera Ant Arc in 2023. I don't know what the manga reaction was but I'm past killing characters as a byword for something being good. Game of Thrones ran that well dry.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 04:25
|
|
|
i for one have investment in gojo, yuji, todo, all of the primary villains from s1, and nanami+megumi haven't been out of it for that long either i do not have investment in Arrow Guy, i honestly barely remember the One And A Half episodes he got exploring his character
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 06:03
|
|
|
The idea that Shibuya should've instead been the characters from the joint school event all showing up and beating up the disaster curses is just so much more a generic and less ballsy way to go then how Shibuya actually plays out.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 07:41
|
|
|
Asuron posted:It’s been a weird discourse around season 2. Season 1 had plenty of breaks for comedy, including the obligatory baseball episode. There were a lot of fights, yes, but they were lower stakes and took time to breathe.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 08:26
|
|
|
My criticism, boiled down to the sparest phrasing, isn't that Shibuya isn't ballsy, it's that the way it is ballsy is sexist and an abdication of the possibly subversive initial setup. That Shibuya subverts shounen tropes isn't in doubt. That it subverts them by buying into the sexist sidelining of women by simultaneously robbing them of power and agency and by giving them the worst of masculinity (of Nanami and MeiMei who's the sex pest?) is disappointing as gently caress. I don't want this arc to be less ballsy. I want it to be less misogynistic. And, frankly, I want that of shounen media and anime in general. I don't normally make a meal out of that desire, but I'm also not normally given such high hopes. X-Ray Pecs posted:Yeah, there’s a difference between an awful girlboss and someone who’s truly vile, and the creators want you to know which one Meimei is. Like, this was a choice that the author made. Nanami and MeiMei are foils and guess which side of that coin the woman is? Ugh. I wanna be clear. I get why people like this arc. I think the ways it delivers on some of the promises of shounen media is really solid. I think it does so by doubling down on some of the worst aspects of shounen media and in the end I think that sucks too much to overlook. I don't think this is just "certain circles" complaining - I think it's a wider audience seeing the content and so more people reacting critically to the objectionable parts of it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 09:57
|
|
|
it's interesting that everyone seems to have a different core criticism and don't seem to find the other criticisms particularly noteworthy themselves. not as a direct statement on any particular critcism, the above one is actually the one i'd say i agree the most with. though, the way that it implies all of the good and interesting character writing happening is exclusively women being fridged and presented poorly i find pretty reductionist about what the writing is actually accomplishing. but the trend certainly exists and it'd also be perfectly fair to observe that female characters really aren't a notable component of almost any of the arc's most engaging or successful writing.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 10:23
|
|
|
RevolverDivider posted:The idea that Shibuya should've instead been the characters from the joint school event all showing up and beating up the disaster curses is just so much more a generic and less ballsy way to go then how Shibuya actually plays out. I don't think anybody is saying that the arc ain't ballsy, or that being ballsy is bad, it's just that it does it in a -for lack of a better term- cheap way. Like, you can have Nobara join Itadori to fight alongside him against mahito for a bit, have some cool scenes and dialog before she gets the bad touch. Her getting suddenly tagged just cheated the readers from some good stuff in exchange for shock value (which can work if done well but here, IMO, it didn't). Sure, she is a nobody in comparison with sukuna's vessel and sukuna's boy crush, it's not like anybody expected her to do that much, but at least let her keep some of her dignity.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 10:27
|
|
|
idk i don't think i'd call most of the events of the arc cheap shock. but yeah i will again agree that it's very telling that my main qualifier on that would be "you just have to ignore all the parts that focus on women." for me, i kinda felt like that element has been there the whole time really (even in s1 nobara was really criminally underused) so it feels a little weird to just now be seeing it talked about like it's some new crippling flaw introduced by this arc. but yeah, totally get people being put off by that, it's definitely my biggest downer on the show - quality of (most of) the out-of-fight character writing aside.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 10:42
|
|
|
RevolverDivider posted:The idea that Shibuya should've instead been the characters from the joint school event all showing up and beating up the disaster curses is just so much more a generic and less ballsy way to go then how Shibuya actually plays out. They shouldn't have been beating the disaster curses because the disaster curses aren't interesting. I don't give a poo poo about Geto or whatever the thing is inside of Geto because they have done absolutely loving nothing to make me care about him. The entire prior arc which might as well have been called "Get people invested in Geto" was actually made worse in retrospect because it turns out the villain is Kang from Ninja Turtles and not actually Geto. Like idk, I just don't find the arc ballsy at all because all the things it does are just things that Western TV did decades prior and it turns out when you do that everything becomes a miserable slog. And yeah I kinda left the sexism aside because I've already spent a bunch of time upthread being annoyed over Nobara.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 11:30
|
|
|
Natural 20 posted:They shouldn't have been beating the disaster curses because the disaster curses aren't interesting. I don't give a poo poo about Geto or whatever the thing is inside of Geto because they have done absolutely loving nothing to make me care about him. Yeah, that's where this arc began to losing me as well. Geto was one of the characters with the most focus and development in the show, wasting it all in the service of, IMHO, cheap twist was a pretty horrible move. Also despite possibly being Captain Obvious here, the thing about "twists", "subversions" and "being balsy" is that they are not inherently positive tropes and a work of fiction isn't automatically good if it includes them. Their setup and execution matters a lot. You can have a balsy, subversive show that is still poo poo and you can have safe, by-the-numbers show that's incredible. Shibuya arc does a lot of subversions and twists, but IMHO isn't very good about either the setup or the execution. The sexism was already mentioned rather extensively and it's definitely a big part of why I dislike the current season as well.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 11:57
|
|
|
im sorry to inform you that this anime is from japan the girls never stood a chance You will have to make do with these beautiful twinks instead
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 12:43
|
|
|
The biggest of twinks was cut to pieces by Sukuna a few episodes ago. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 12:48
|
|
|
Lt. Lizard posted:The biggest of twinks was cut to pieces by Sukuna a few episodes ago. Jogo?
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 13:01
|
|
|
Collapsing Farts posted:im sorry to inform you that this anime is from japan JJK is significantly worse about it than most shonen anime imo.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 13:05
|
|
|
everything interesting about Geto from the Hidden Inventory arc was already done in the movie.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 14:31
|
|
|
Maera Sior posted:Season 1 had plenty of breaks for comedy, including the obligatory baseball episode. There were a lot of fights, yes, but they were lower stakes and took time to breathe. It does seem like the shonen battle formula in general to start off like that, ramp it up and then forget to go back to it. If what you get is really good, you don't care (One Piece) and if it isn't, it becomes really noticeable (Bleach).
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 14:59
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:It does seem like the shonen battle formula in general to start off like that, ramp it up and then forget to go back to it. If what you get is really good, you don't care (One Piece) and if it isn't, it becomes really noticeable (Bleach). I get that everyone wants to see hype fights, but without the breathers there's no reason to care about the people who are fighting. I don't watch enough shounen to be able to point to one that remembers this, but surely they must exist.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 15:08
|
|
|
Maera Sior posted:I get that everyone wants to see hype fights, but without the breathers there's no reason to care about the people who are fighting. I don't watch enough shounen to be able to point to one that remembers this, but surely they must exist. Chainsaw Man. It's pretty good about having cooldown arcs after it does something horrible to its cast.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 16:10
|
|
|
King of Solomon posted:I'm curious about the context of the negativity you're seeing, assuming it's from places outside this thread. Was it like that for most/all of Shibuya, did it start when Nanami died or Nobara got her skull blown open? The ANN weekly ep review really turned on the series with specific negativity arousing Nobara's eye pop and has been really negative since. Another contributor gave their worst of the year (with the caveat it's "the worst" but took the biggest drop), citing the action and shock character deaths. This is why I needed to just say something somewhere because their AotY Attack on Titan which seems... contradictory. Then it's just been some odd talking heads on twitter, the source of all the best takes. Like, it's nothing major, different strokes for different folks, but it just caught my eye (no offence, Nobara!) X-Ray Pecs posted:Meimei’s never been presented in a good light, she’s only cared about money to a ridiculous degree, and we even saw earlier this arc how she was willing to sacrifice Uiui, and how glad he was to do it. While Nanami fought and died to the very end because of what he believed was right, Meimei bolted to where Nanami wanted to retire, [ACTUAL BAD poo poo], and did some insider trading. It ties into what Gojo and others in this thread have said, Jujutsu Sorcerer society is completely rotten top-to-bottom, and you almost have to be screwed up in the head to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer. Yeah, I'm all good with her being a bad (in universe) character. That's fine and grand. It's excellent characterisation and world building. I just hate it's the Uiui bit because it distracts from all that good bad stuff by just being bad bad stuff. We go from "She's a lovely person looking out for number 1 and disrespects people she should shouldn't" to "creepy child abuser." it keeps her as a bad character but in a far less interesting way. Gimme me insider trading baddie back, anime!!
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 16:38
|
|
|
AoT didn't go in for any shock deaths in its last act. Even the big shocking moment got a lot of payoff after to emphasize how the character's friends and the killer were impacted by the death. It was brutal and gory, but it all had clear purpose that a lot of Shibuya deaths lacked, at least so far.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 16:44
|
|
|
Natural 20 posted:They shouldn't have been beating the disaster curses because the disaster curses aren't interesting. I think you're selling the disaster curses short here, at least where Jogo/Hanami/Dagon are concerned. I found those three to be interesting antagonists because they take the template of the monster born out of humanity's fears that preys on humans but instead of being generic predators they are a group of buddies that genuinely like each other despite being fundamentally inhuman natural spirits. JJK creates a world where the status quo is that Satoru Gojo is a superman keeping order and effectively turning the antagonists into underdogs, and Gege choosing to make the bulk of these antagonists avatars of nature in a story that takes place in the modern era effectively gives their personal narrative a subtext of humans oppressing nature. Of course, the trio aren't some environmental avengers, they're basically racist humans and Sukuna correctly calls out Jogo for that before he dies. This isn't a coincidence, as the Death Paintings also see each other as a family. Add to this that Mahito, who represents the fear of other humans, is not just the most effective of them all but is also stated to be the one with "the most potential" among them and I think JJK is sowing the seeds to do something interesting with the concept of curses as representations of humanity's worst traits, corrupting not just of themselves/each other (Mahito's Idle Transfiguration) but also the natural world (Jogo/Hanami/Dagon). Ultimately, I'm still disappointed that they're dead before any of their narrative potential could coalesce into something concrete. Maybe the concept will get developed further by some other curses down the line, or maybe I was just projecting really hard into a quirky miniboss squad and the two paragraphs above are a fluke. Which leaves us with some surprise JRPG final boss guy who might as well be named Necron joyriding Geto poised as the main antagonist in the future, which... Look, I'm willing to give him a chance at least until this season ends but he's not making a good first impression so far.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 16:53
|
|
|
chiasaur11 posted:Chainsaw Man. It's pretty good about having cooldown arcs after it does something horrible to its cast. I don't think of Chainsaw Man as shounen, but (at least as of the first season) it had a better handle on the pacing. I'd tentatively put Demon Slayer into the category of remembering to downshift, except that those sections suck.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 17:01
|
|
|
Mahito alone is more interesting than all of the students put together tbh Many of these characters are reasonably interesting conceptually or on paper but I definitely would not say the half an episode each we got of most of them in s1 had me invested in them at all ninjewtsu fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Dec 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 17:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 20:27 |
|
|
Did broom girl even get a fight? I genuinely remember nothing about her other than "oh yeah, there's one on a flying broom"
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 17:40
|
|