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Southern Cassowary posted:yeah, i agree. when people were talking about the robin scene i was expecting pure shock value but it both tied into what they were going for thematically and was done artfully enough to not be tacky. that being said, 'guy you idolized in the past is actually a piece of poo poo rapist' seems like a pretty stupid story beat that also clashes with the tone of the series, even if i think they managed to make a compelling episode out of it. like kiruko and maru have obviously encountered some truly horrific situations, but it always seemed like they were more kino-style observers finding humor and humanity and the occasional body horror/circular saw tragedy as they explore their world; it's way more uncomfortable to force this kind of cruelty onto the main character.
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Jun 17, 2023 23:30
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Big Leg posted:that being said, 'guy you idolized in the past is actually a piece of poo poo rapist' seems like a pretty stupid story beat that also clashes with the tone of the series, even if i think they managed to make a compelling episode out of it. like kiruko and maru have obviously encountered some truly horrific situations, but it always seemed like they were more kino-style observers finding humor and humanity and the occasional body horror/circular saw tragedy as they explore their world; it's way more uncomfortable to force this kind of cruelty onto the main character. i think i came at it from being surprised that it tied into some themes/plot they'd been building and that i found it depressingly believable that robin would be the kind of person to do this. unlike some game of thrones-esque shock value thing, there's the potential that it will push the plot forward in a meaningful way and i'm willing to see if it handles the aftermath well based on that.
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Jun 18, 2023 02:21
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Well, poo poo. Before starting, still a few comments about the previous episode -I guess the facility AI is 'good' and don't have any ulterior motive, given that is helping the kids escape. -in hindsight, It makes sense for the sunglasses girl to be the hiruko that was on the underground parking in the hospital, as she only connected with Mimihime, so she surely will go with her after escaping. -Somehow, I forgot to comment the twist near the end, there are two babies, twins! Overall, this episode has been very good. The tone goes from an undefined bittersweetness, to uncertainty and hope to the downright creepy and dangerous. Great direction. On to this episode. -The twins are not just... twins? As per the doctor reaction, there is a difference between the two. -Robin assaults Kiruko. WTH. Thanks god they didn't went full misery porn on this. Why? First, this is not a face of happiness...  Coming back for a moment to her flashback with the kart racing and Robin, there was a moment when she woke up and there was no one waiting for her, that I almost thought 'maybe she made up the orphanage and everything and nothing was real, same as the mind swap'. I started to think it could be a unreliable narrator trick. Obviously Robin is here and is real, and he comments about the orphanage too, so that was a crazy theory. But given what it happens, -I wonder if there was still a bit un unreliable narrator as I said and the relationships and the personality shown in the flashback were different to what we were shown, and it was just how she/he wished to be, as part of a cope mechanism for the trauma. Think famous series with a hacker, for those who have watched it. -Of course, all could have been real, and Robin's character has changed over the last five years. -Or another theory, he was always secretly an rear end in a top hat, and Haruki as a young kind only had a very partial, incomplete view of him. In any case given the face he does when he sees her, I think something happened between them. Maybe a betrayal or whatever, because it seemed he actually was in fear. So maybe the rape was more about vengeance for something that happened ? Turin Turambar fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Jun 18, 2023 |
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Jun 18, 2023 10:10
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At the very least, the twin who was marked by the doctor was probably Maru, considering that maru = circle in Japanese. So where's the other kid?
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Jun 18, 2023 10:33
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Just a theory, but given that Robin knew Usami and his patient (probably Mimihime?), could he be another one of the kids? Looking back through the episode, his pupil size and color match those of the ponytail boy (one of the four who went outside though the hole).Ibblebibble posted:At the very least, the twin who was marked by the doctor was probably Maru, considering that maru = circle in Japanese lol drat, that completely flew over my head.
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Jun 18, 2023 10:41
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cave emperor posted:Just a theory, but given that Robin knew Usami and his patient (probably Mimihime?), could he be another one of the kids? Looking back through the episode, his pupil size and color match those of the ponytail boy (one of the four who went outside though the hole). I think he doesn't look old enough to be ponytail boy? But he could be one of the younger kids from the facility they were taken care of.
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Jun 18, 2023 12:54
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Turin Turambar posted:First, this is not a face of happiness... This is definitely the face of someone looking at a ghost.
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Jun 18, 2023 19:30
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Keep in mind the first time we meet Robin that he's kicking the poo poo out of some thugs who were already down, and Haruki sees that and thinks it's badass instead of an extreme red flag.
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Jun 18, 2023 23:51
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Yo what the gently caress
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Jun 20, 2023 06:34
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Centzon Totochtin posted:Yo what the gently caress 
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Jun 20, 2023 20:06
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i wonder if the scene where haruki looks in the mirror and briefly sees their younger male appearance is suppose to indicate an unreliable narrator or psychological trauma (maybe both?) also not sure if its important but the two twins were labeled "Tokio JR." and "JR. C" in the previous episode, which might make one of them a clone? cave emperor posted:Just a theory, but given that Robin knew Usami and his patient (probably Mimihime?), could he be another one of the kids? Looking back through the episode, his pupil size and color match those of the ponytail boy (one of the four who went outside though the hole). this was my guess as well
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Jun 20, 2023 21:23
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Big Leg posted:that being said, 'guy you idolized in the past is actually a piece of poo poo rapist' seems like a pretty stupid story beat that also clashes with the tone of the series, even if i think they managed to make a compelling episode out of it. like kiruko and maru have obviously encountered some truly horrific situations, but it always seemed like they were more kino-style observers finding humor and humanity and the occasional body horror/circular saw tragedy as they explore their world; it's way more uncomfortable to force this kind of cruelty onto the main character. I also didn't like this plot beat (it's probably the only one I've strongly disliked). I feel like it's intended as a hosed up way to push forward the Maru/Kiruko relationship, but Jesus Christ that's the absolute worst way to do that
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Jun 21, 2023 08:33
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God, it took me HOURS to watch this latest episode. I was spoiled about the actions taken on Haruki in the Spring Anime thread, but I'd only seen the word and the name, so I was dreading it and watching 2-3 minute increments, just waiting for the awfulness. Christ, I hated it even more, the notion that not only did Robin do THAT, he compounded it by using a mirror so Haruki would both feel it and see his sister going through it without being able to save her. I spent the last couple of minutes feeling like this:  Hell, I couldn't even watch it. I got to Robin showing the mirror, then just skipped to the kids watching the sky. I don't need to see that poo poo. And you're saying it's WORSE in the still images the manga provides? 
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Jun 22, 2023 17:11
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yeah it's worse. (spoilers ahead are just for how the manga handles the events of the most recent episode) the manga is more explicit with nudity in general and they spend some more time on the act itself as well iirc. they cut away from it at about the same moment but there's a little more of it by volume i guess just because of the panel format. it's pretty upsetting. i got caught up with the anime to the episode right before this one, and was so excited about the story that i went straight to the manga, and that was the first loving chapter i read. it sucked. almost did not stick with it. i think the story is still going somewhere interesting but i really do not like when that is used as a plot device
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Jun 22, 2023 19:11
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Episode 13 Flashback -Something that seemed plot-contrived to me it's how someone seems to have bombed the installation and *in the middle of that crisis*, they decide to give the baby to a teenage mother? The normal thing would be to delay that for a week! The author just needed to do it for what it happens next... -Namedrop of the 'Noah project', but no detail of what was. It seemed the woman's agenda is more aligned toward saving the children? -Did Tokio died (or turned into a monster? here, in this moment? With the baby? drat O_o  -Mimihime and her future bf get lost in the forest, they don't know how easy is to get lose in one. I guess they never reunite with the others in the facility because of this. They had a tender, moving scene. Also some parallels with the other couple near the river 15 years later. -Goddamn I was wrong, and they are still in pre-apocalyptic times! (see post ending scene) Present times  ...and the other shoe dropped. I think my theory of 'Kiruko's delusion of being her lost brother' was right. From our audience perspective we can see how her reasoning of 'memories lingering in the body' is BS, something that she is making up on the spot to be able to maintain her elaborate delusion. She was Kiruko all along. -In fact we have another glimpse of her real memory as Kiruko, a pistol shot is heard, and Robin involved, and a memory of 'it hurts!'. I think this is why Robin made the face he made in the past episode. He was seeing a ghost, he thought she was dead? He tried to kill her. -The moment with Maru corralling Robin at the end of the corridor but still not attacking the fucker was tense. He should have punched him a bit more :/ Alas the author uses the opportunity to show the conflicted sentiments of Kiruko and he escapes alive. He also seems to have reserved some role further in the plot, given one of the last scene.... -where we learn that Robin is involved in experiments with humans and monsters.
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Jun 24, 2023 22:35
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Turin Turambar posted:
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Jun 25, 2023 02:10
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Yeah I still think it's Haruki's brain in Kiriko's body, with the big brain sized scar and the different hair color Very mixed feelings about the last 2 episodes. It's just such a shift in tone. Like the world they live in is harsh and dangerous but it's mostly just humans and creatures trying to survive. This is the first time we see anything truly evil and its so unimaginably cruel. And since it's the end of the season I don't even know how it'll advance the story. And I know everyone deals with trauma in their own way and at their own pace but Kiruko forgiving her attacker that easily and getting over it that quickly felt weird. You figure they'd at least get/beat some information out of Robin instead of just letting him disappear. (Also looked like Kiruko could've gotten out of the ropes at any time???). Maru trying to shoot his shot RIGHT AFTER SHE WAS RAPED FOR SEVERAL DAYS also felt extremely tone deaf of him but I guess he's still a lovesick teenager. I don't think Taka is Robin because Taka's eyes are more green and Robin's are more brown but it might've been the lighting. But if Robin were Taka then that'd mean he's a Hiruko and he could've just used his own Hiruko powers to fight maru instead of trying to unlock the one in the room. I think Taka means hawk though so that would be kind of funny if they were the same person, swapping one bird name for another. I think whoever guessed that Shiro and Mimihime are the doctor and the machine lady are right though, when Shiro washes his face in the river and slicks his hair back there's a big resemblance, and Mimihime was really impressed with the sky when they left the facility and her dying wish was to see the sky again. Overall I do still like the show a lot and the production itself was great, nice animation, breathtaking scenery, good music and a willingness to experiment with styles and let directors do their thing but they can only do so much with the source material unless they wanted to deviate from it significantly. It was probably my show of the season until ep 12 so it's a shame the last 2 episode kind of soured me on the whole thing. Centzon Totochtin fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jun 25, 2023 |
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Jun 25, 2023 04:54
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Oh right Dr. Usami was looking at the bird button/pin that mimihime gave him in the final episode when he killed himself, I'm an idiot, they're definitely Shiro and Mimihime
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Jun 25, 2023 17:35
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I don't see why the brain transplant wouldn't be real, the Takahara Director was referencing a similar procedure episodes back when she promoted that other woman.
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Jun 26, 2023 07:30
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Maybe it’s both and neither? Maybe it’s like, after the monster attack there was one brains worth of grey matter between them so the doctor Frankensteined a new composite brain. It would really jive with Maru’s big speech at the end of the episode.
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Jun 26, 2023 08:48
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Well, that was an amazing story, avoiding most of the anime cliches I dislike. It was just a well told story, with believable characters and antagonists. The assault scene, I'm not sure. It boils down to this question: When is it OK to include rape in a story? That's something I cannot answer and I'm not sure even if it's a question I get to ask. Even after the apocalypse, rape is done by the people you know. Was it to show that this is still the same world we are living in, full of danger especially in a societal breakdown with eons old familiar fears mingle with the unexplainably weird? The act enraged me and also made me disgusted. It was our own worst qualities made manifest. In the end I find myself not condemning the author for their choice.
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Jun 26, 2023 20:44
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Really hard to say "this was an inappropriate and unnecessary use of X" in a work that isn't finished.
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Jun 26, 2023 20:46
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Yawgmoft posted:Really hard to say "this was an inappropriate and unnecessary use of X" in a work that isn't finished. Indeed, I wanna give the author some credit here.
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Jun 26, 2023 20:58
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hope this gets a second season cus it would be a shame for it to end there with nothing really explained
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Jun 28, 2023 04:11
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Wow, raping someone he hasn't seen in years, mutilating a woman and hooking her up to a monster in some sort of ungodly experiment...I'm just gonna come out and say it: this Robin Inazaki guy is a real jerk!
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Jun 28, 2023 17:56
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Let's hear him out, guys.
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Jun 28, 2023 22:38
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gently caress, I avoided finishing this last episode like the plague. I was so sickened by the last point of episode 12 that I was just not looking forward to more of it or the aftermath. So, in that aspect, I'm glad Kiruko kinda cries it out and gets over it, because seeing her go through the doldrums of PTSD/depression after rape would also be awful. I -loved- the catharsis of seeing Maru feed Robin his own teeth through fist action. A balm to my torn-up heart, especially when realizing Kiruko might actually be herself and not just Haruki. Somehow, that makes it worse? I have no idea why. The only thing better would have been Maru or hell, Kiruko handling poo poo by killing Robin. That last shot of the woman being hooked up to the monster and them abandoning the plant makes me think he's going to come out more and I don't want to see him and remember. Hopefully, Kiruko beams his rear end.
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Jun 29, 2023 04:27
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The mystery is what kept me watching this show but I don't think that I'll continue it if it gets a second season. I never really liked the character designs, I hated the episode done by the Trigger guy and I'm not really down with the whole rape story beat. I'm not gonna say that stories should never touch sexual assault but it didn't work for me and I'm glad I knew it was gonna happen from someone's spoiler post so I wasn't blindsided. The manga is still ongoing right? Have there been satisfying developments and does the story do something with the rape to make it necessary?
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Jun 30, 2023 04:28
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I just don't want a pregnancy storyline please.
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Jun 30, 2023 07:58
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Epi Lepi posted:The mystery is what kept me watching this show but I don't think that I'll continue it if it gets a second season. I never really liked the character designs, I hated the episode done by the Trigger guy and I'm not really down with the whole rape story beat. I'm not gonna say that stories should never touch sexual assault but it didn't work for me and I'm glad I knew it was gonna happen from someone's spoiler post so I wasn't blindsided. The manga has stayed good up until the point I'm at, but I still think the rape thing was completely unnecessary in this case. My interpretation of it, even as someone who has overall been enjoying the series (and would recommend continuing it since it hasn't done anything else like this yet), is that it's (this isn't a spoiler of post-anime plot, but rather my subjective understanding of the above) some extremely hosed up way to progress the Maru/Kiruko romance and cement Kiruko's "feminine" identity. I think it's the sort of thing where the author is just oblivious to how messed up it is to use this as a plot device, and it's also possible my interpretation is wrong (though nothing has happened yet to convince me it is).
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Jun 30, 2023 08:37
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i dont think its about that, so much as a way of showing that kiruko's idealized version of the past is truly dead and gone, and was never as good as they thought it was to begin with. robin always had that in him. im sort of mixed on it, i get that it needed to be a shocking moment for thematic reasons and i dont think it was handled terribly (outside of the limitations of needing to end the anime in the next ep so they have to play a jaunty ed that shows the adventure continuing) but i dont think it was handled perfectly either. at the same time, idk, speaking as a survivor myself ive gotten a lot out of similarly messy executions of this stuff. i dont think its done great and i get criticism of it but at the same time im pretty against the idea that like, if you have criticism of it that means it shouldnt have happened in the story period.
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Jun 30, 2023 08:45
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I remember hearing about the sexual assault stuff after seeing the first episode or two. I read quite a bit of the author's other work And Yet the Town Moves and I figured maybe this could actually be a rare case of the subject being handled tastefully, since that series (while being a very different genre) seemed to be fairly humanistic and intelligent. What happened in episode 12 could've been handled a lot worse, but that isn't saying much. It was also a very, very bitter note to end the series on, and what little resolution was present in episode 13 felt unearned. It's also disappointing to imagine that there may not have been much of a point to it, but I feel like Endorph's take on it might alleviate that a little. I wish the anime had just ended a bit earlier to omit all that stuff and leave the "Outside" storyline on a high note while including the resolution that the "Inside" story got, but I haven't thought much about how they could've made that possible. Overall, I think this and Oshi no Ko were the only series I enjoyed this season outside of all the romcoms. I'd definitely watch a continuation and might pick up the manga.
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Jun 30, 2023 14:59
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if you want something really bleak by this mangaka, read getenrou. jesus christ, that ending.
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Jun 30, 2023 15:47
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If I wanted to go directly to where the anime left off, what chapter of the manga should I start at?
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Jul 6, 2023 13:11
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Ibblebibble posted:If I wanted to go directly to where the anime left off, what chapter of the manga should I start at? Manga Updates says the anime "Ends at Vol 6, Chap 38 Page 7"
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Jul 6, 2023 15:05
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I had read the manga some time ago, came back for the anime recently. Holy poo poo, episode 8. Hit me harder than the panels by a country mile. They knew how to draw the most out of that particular tragedy. The assault angle is a sour deal, and i think it was part of what made me drop the manga, though I mostly took a pause on everything I was reading at the time. I can see how it fits the overall theme of misplaced trust and dealing with it, but there was a trace of reveling in it that felt bad.
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Aug 4, 2023 04:33
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