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The whole death thing in isekai is weird (especially what it implies about the psychology of the assumed audience). Older portal fantasy didn’t need this; the protagonists walked through a magical doorway while exploring an old mansion, or fell asleep under a magical tree, or were transported by a magical storm, or astrally projected themselves to Mars somehow, or got spirited away in the middle of their daily lives. What does the death thing add, beyond tropes-for-the-sake-of-tropes? One explanation I’ve seen is that it prevents the protagonist from even trying to get back home; though I’m not sure why this is necessary either.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:34
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mycot posted:Isn't that explanation enough? Most people would at least have it as a goal to get back. Unless the character absolutely hates their old life and has no attachment to it, but that's not much different from the death from overwork/the modern world versions. I’m tempted to say that it’s more interesting if the protagonist does want to get back, because that’s a least a motivation, and one that can either lead to other motivations or conflict with them. For example: what if multiple people get isekai’d together, and some are more interested in getting back home than others? What if the protagonist finds a way back home almost immediately, but it comes at a price he’s not willing to pay?
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Jan 3, 2024 00:09
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Lord Koth posted:To me, it mostly seems to be an excuse to give them superpowers in the reincarnation process that they wouldn't otherwise have. Like, the Pevensie siblings had nothing superhuman about them period (or, to go further back, Hank Morgan didn't either), John Carter was superhuman only inasmuch as he was an Earthling now operating under far lesser gravity, Kagome was from a shrine family to begin with, etc, etc. Hank Morgan is effectively superhuman - like many isekai protagonists, he applies his modern knowledge in ways that make no logistical sense. And John Carter was already unaging (for some reason) before going to Mars. But yeah, getting an overpowered ability as a bonus on top of being transported is an obnoxious trope, generally the result of being afraid to let the protagonist actually face challenges.
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Jan 3, 2024 02:04
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Darth Walrus posted:The post-Madoka 'dark magical girl' trend was mostly pretty dire, even if GRANBELM was quite fun. I always point out that there weren’t actually that many of them (especially not compared to isekai). Aside from Madoka itself, there was The Sun Penetrates the Illusion, Magical Girl Site, Magical Girl Raising Project, Yuki Yuuna, Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka, and Granbelm. Selector Infected Wixoss was obviously Madoka-influenced but not actually a magical girl show. I don’t think any of them (including Granbelm) were particularly good, but people were talking about the genre like it was omnipresent before half of those shows had even come out. There was never actually a glut of them comparable to isekai or even magic battle school harems (or whatever the correct order of the words in the name of that genre is).
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Jan 3, 2024 15:59
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Waffleman_ posted:That's because it's the same tropes At one point people were using the term “native isekai” for those kinds of series, but the oxymoronic nature of the term provoked a backlash. Not sure what a better term is. Dorakue fantasy? In general, if the setting has video game mechanics and/or capital-H Heroes and Demon Kings, it’s garbage. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jan 10, 2024 |
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Jan 10, 2024 17:50
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The Colonel posted:bad fantasy has always existed so i dont see a need to differentiate it It’s a particular kind of bad fantasy, though. Older Western “Extruded Fantasy Product” of the Sword of Shannara sort doesn’t have video game mechanics, and while it basically has Heroes and Demon Kings, it lacks the obnoxious pseudo-self-awareness implied by using those specific terms. And of course the gross male sexual fantasy elements were generally less present in Extruded Fantasy Product. (They were present in the kind of bad fantasy that’s imitating Howard rather than Tolkien, but that’s yet another subgenre.) Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Jan 10, 2024 |
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Jan 10, 2024 18:00
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Anyone else watching High Card? I started watching it more as a substitute for Bungou Stray Dogs than because of its actual merit, but by now I'm actually pretty interested in it. I like that Chris is actually facing consequences for the X-Hand thing. There were hints fairly early on that Theodore and the royal family aren't really good guys, which are getting more and more overt. I'm curious what that will lead to in the end; will Fourlandia become a republic? I'm a little curious if there's going to be a third season; even taking into account the cards involved in the manga (and the LNs that will probably never get translated), there's still a lot of cards unrevealed. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 22:56
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mycot posted:Dragonball Z didn't really end with a bunch of marriages because romantic relationships were so deemphasized in general so they just happened throughout the series. I appreciated Dragon Ball's awareness that marriage isn't the end of the story - it's a surprisingly mature attitude for such a goofy series to take. I'm not such a big fan of the actual implementation of this, though; Chi-Chi's characterization basically does an inexplicable 180-degree turn when she gets married. Though I think someone in a thread on this forum had some interesting insights into her character; she's a tragic figure in a way, pursuing a concept of "normalcy" that she gets from reading magazines rather than from anyone she knows personally, and which her husband is completely uninterested in.
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Jan 18, 2024 20:22
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Bulma's secret to staying relevant is that she was never really a combatant to begin with, just smart and rich, so she didn't get left behind by power level escalation the way other characters did.
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Jan 18, 2024 20:59
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Endorph posted:the thing about dbz also is that it really doesnt give its villains like, Squads of Named Henchmen for each of the weaker members to fight. theres like 1-3 guys that matter and goku or vegeta kill all of them. Yeah, that was always one of Bleach's big problems: the undercard fights bogging everything down. Another big problem was the fights themselves getting bogged down with "atmospheric" panels full of empty space. Having said that, Dragon Ball had its own problems that tend to get overlooked out of nostalgia. One was the way tactics basically stopped mattering around the Frieza fight. But I think the fundamental issue I've always had with it is that the characterization was always pretty shallow even by shonen manga standards. Obviously this is partly because of its gag-manga roots; the flimsy motivations of villains like Pilaf and General Red were  , and as Xibanya pointed out in their post comparing Dragon Ball to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, you're limited in how much depth you can give characters in a world where almost nothing has actual consequences. But it's not like "serious" villains like Piccolo Sr. and Frieza have any more depth to them than Pilaf or Red, and despite what I said above about Chi-Chi being "a tragic figure," she's really just one stock character who suddenly turns into a different stock character.
Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 03:33
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haypliss posted:Only thing the English title lacks is a convenient abbreviation, otherwise not sure why this continues to be a sticking point. DinD?
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Jan 26, 2024 20:27
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In today's High Card, we finally find out the main villain's motivation. Not a very sympathetic one, TBH. "I want to use my superpowers to spin objects around whenever I feel like and you can't stop me!" isn't much of a justification for all the death and destruction he's been responsible for at this point, especially since it implies (in case it wasn't already obvious) that his occasional rhetoric about "family" and maybe ending world hunger was insincere. We also now know what the royal family is trying to do with the cards, which turns out to be basically just stopping other people from using them (although I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out there's more to it than that somehow). There's still some mysteries here, of course. We don't know exactly what Who's Who is trying to do with them (I suspect King himself doesn't really know and mostly just wants Theodore's attention). What the Black Knight's deal is is also unclear; I'm guessing he's one of the original knights, went mad when he felt betrayed by the first king, and his consciousness survives via his card, possessing its player in a similar manner to Love and Peace. And the talk about San Galgano "killing gods" is also pretty mysterious, since there's been no mention of gods up to this point. (It feels a bit copied from Code Geass, where the deicide thing felt equally abrupt.) There's also still enough individual cards unrevealed and not in any known faction's possession that resolving everything in just eight more episodes would require some rushing; it's possible they'll be a third season, but it's also possible they'll just say "Oh, by the way, the Black Knight has the remaining cards" or something like that.
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Jan 30, 2024 02:47
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Xelkelvos posted:All we know is that High Card continues its gay subtext, now with the villain and the leader of the org with King jealous that's not getting attention from the cold and aloof guy. Oh, yeah. It's interesting because often in this sort of show (admittedly a difficult subgenre to precisely define) there's shipper-appeal without much actual subtext, if that makes sense, just attractive young men existing in proximity to each other, but in High Card it feels like at least some of these characters are actually supposed to be gay/bi.
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Jan 30, 2024 03:07
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haypliss posted:First season of High Card wasn't clearing BSD tbh, though it's nice to hear they might be improving. In terms of homoeroticism or in terms of quality? It's still not as good as BSD in some ways; the situations are less interestingly complicated, for example. Though it doesn't have the weird morality BSD sometimes does, at least. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Jan 30, 2024 |
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Jan 30, 2024 03:55
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More random thoughts on High Card. Is Owen dead? Depending on how Red Labyrinth works (or how Zenon assumes it works), Zenon might have left Owen alive (and probably in possession of his card, since we haven't seen it in Klondike's possession) to avoid trapping himself in another dimension. We know what all the Diamonds do except for the 4, 5, and 6 at this point. However, the other suits all still have unrevealed high-ranking cards: A and 10 of Hearts; A, K, Q, and 9 (and 6) of Clubs; and Q and J (and 3) of Spades. The Ace of Hearts is the big mystery here, since the King of Hearts power shown in the manga seems hard to top. Complete physical invulnerability? For Clubs, the obvious "missing elements" are light, sound, cold/ice, and water, although light and sound have some overlap with powers from other suits. I assume the Black Knight's power is either the Queen or the Jack of Spades. I'm guessing Tilt and Burst have their own (probably rather more sympathetic) motives, distinct from Ban's. I think they might be hiding the 3 of Diamonds and 3 of Spades from Ban; that would explain why we haven't seen those cards since Bobby Ball died. Edit: I guess one of the Clubs could be poison. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jan 30, 2024 |
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Jan 30, 2024 21:04
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Sakurazuka posted:Thought it was a Simpsons quote "Monkeycheese" and "Simpsons quote" aren't mutually exclusive. ("Purple monkey dishwasher!")
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Feb 1, 2024 22:26
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GateOfD posted:For her friend who has a crush on her cousin, it is like 2nd cousin or whatever Cousin relationships aren’t particularly taboo in most non-Anglosphere places.
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Feb 5, 2024 03:02
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High Card is taking its story slowly enough that you’d think there’d be a third season…but this episode also reminded us of the January deadline for the coronation approaching (it’s already mid-December), so maybe not?
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Feb 5, 2024 20:54
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Based on discussions of High Card elsewhere, I may have misunderstood some things. Everyone seems to think that the Black Knight and San Galgano are the same entity, which I guess is less complicated than the alternatives. Also, apparently it was Iris Moyes rather than Burst who killed Bobby Ball - it's confusing because they look so similar. Or are they the same person too? Also, I'm pretty sure 7 episodes aren't enough to cover everything. There's still the 12 unrevealed cards, the fights against the remaining Klondike members, the gathering of the cards not in Klondike's or Pinochle's hands yet, the payoff to Finn's doubts about whether Pinochle are doing the right thing, Tilt's motivations, what Iris Moyes has to do with everything, what really happened with the cards in ancient times (and the nature of the Black Knight), and probably other plot threads I've forgotten.
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Feb 6, 2024 23:30
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Spookydonut posted:the saga of tanya the evil (little girl war diaries is the literal translation) I appreciate that it has "evil" in the title to keep people from missing the point (which doesn't stop some people from missing the point anyway...).
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Feb 21, 2024 03:55
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In this week’s High Card, we finally answer the obvious question: how the Two of Clubs worked before guns were invented.
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Feb 27, 2024 06:06
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Bakeneko posted:I still refuse to believe that’s the weakest card when the “stick people’s hands together” card exists. That one is also a 2, but I agree that it seems underwhelming even compared to the other 2s. Speaking of which, I always found it funny that Chelsea is mad at Chris for being a phony when she's the phoniest kind of person imaginable: a social media influencer. Edit: I wonder if Lala is unique, or if there are similar beings and magical artifacts in other countries. Maybe this world's equivalents of Italy and Japan have their own sets of magical cards that are tarot cards and hanafuda cards, respectively, instead of regular playing cards. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Feb 27, 2024 |
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Feb 27, 2024 15:53
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High Card Season 2 is over. It resolved the main plotlines while leaving room for another season if they want to do one. Of course they never found Tilt's body, so he's going to turn up alive if they do another season, but presumably actually dead if they don't. In retrospect, Finn should have just killed Lala. It would have prevented the deaths of Tilt, Burst, and several palace guards. (And Ban and Zenon, I guess.)
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Mar 26, 2024 03:08
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