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As we lead up to my much-awaited watching of Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, maybe even this weekend, I'm just going to post screens from the relevant episodes of Aoi Honoo:

 

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Binge watched Rokka no Yuusha.

 

Kind of wish I hadn't.

 

Guessed the seventh in like episode 3. When she started explaining that she was doing it for peace I just held my head in my hands. How could such an interesting premise have such a boring fucking ending?

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hahahaha

 

Good thing 0080 doesn't deal with Amuro.

 

I hope you don't hate it.  I hope you kinda like it.  I hope you kinda get it on my level.


:x

 

Please don't hate it ^_^;;

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Rokka no Yuusha was the best thing from last season. The ending was ultimately unimportant to what made the show great. The mystery was fine, but it's the ever-present tension that made it good, not the whodunnit part.

 

I'll also just say that for the vast majority of people watching the show, they didn't figure out the seventh right away. So, sucks for you that you got lucky, I guess? Like, you act like it was obvious, but there are lot of cues for every other character's "obvious" guilt, too.

 

Ultimately, I feel like if all you cared about while watching the show was "who is the bad guy", then, well, of course you didn't like it.

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Rokka no Yuusha was the best thing from last season. The ending was ultimately unimportant to what made the show great. The mystery was fine, but it's the ever-present tension that made it good, not the whodunnit part.

 

I'll also just say that for the vast majority of people watching the show, they didn't figure out the seventh right away. So, sucks for you that you got lucky, I guess? Like, you act like it was obvious, but there are lot of cues for every other character's "obvious" guilt, too.

 

Ultimately, I feel like if all you cared about while watching the show was "who is the bad guy", then, well, of course you didn't like it.

 

To be fair, if the actual strength of the show was the ever-present tension, they shouldn't have even risked tipping their hand on the whodunnit part. In almost every Japanese genre work with that sort of thing, the well-intentioned extremist "doing it for peace" is always the bad guy. I don't know if it's because the United States nuked Japan "for peace" or what, but it's almost universal as a toxic motive in anime and manga.

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Maybe. I am unfamiliar with this trend. I feel like... I've seen more examples that are the opposite of what you say. Well, maybe I've seen enough examples that are the opposite of what you say, often alongside exactly the thing you're talking about. There's been a ton of Main Characters fighting for piece in anime. Maybe more typical to the shounen genre? I don't know. (EDIT: Your favorite, Trigun!!)

 

I figured out who it was much later, assuming it was someone else entirely because there are a million red herrings in this show. In my experience, talking to other people (mostly GAF people), early on, barely anyone suspected the actual culprit. It wasn't until the series progressed that people began suspecting the actual culprit.

 

So, that's where my "lucky" accusation came in.

 

Also apparently I was grumpy this morning (I was definitely grumpy this morning) and that post came off as such. Sorry!

 

(I still stand by my point that knowing who the culprit is doesn't at all ruin the show, because the tension comes less from WHO it, and more from what happens BECAUSE they did it. I believe this with all of my heart!)

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Maybe. I am unfamiliar with this trend. I feel like... I've seen more examples that are the opposite of what you say. Well, maybe I've seen enough examples that are the opposite of what you say, often alongside exactly the thing you're talking about. There's been a ton of Main Characters fighting for piece in anime. Maybe more typical to the shounen genre? I don't know. (EDIT: Your favorite, Trigun!!)

 

I make the distinction between the trope of a character using nonviolence or minimal violence to protect individual people or groups (the protagonists from Trigun and Rurouni Kenshin) and the trope of a character using violence or hyper-violence to enforce an abstract "peace" on everyone (every Naruto villain, every Gundam villain). They're both common, but they're very different from each other on a thematic level. You never see a protagonist who wants to end all war forever, for example, because the desire to protect people from harm is only laudable when it's feasible, hence the smaller scale. Impossible dreams that only hurt people in the process of being attempted are the province of antagonists only, except for certain subversions (Evangelion, for example, which asserts that all dreams are impossible and hurt people, but having no dream is even worse).

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I know I've seen plenty of Violent Protagonists Fighting for Peace, though!

 

Anyway Rokka is great and that's all that matters!!

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I know I've seen plenty of Violent Protagonists Fighting for Peace, though!

 

I don't know, can you give any examples of anime/manga protagonists who are like "I want to stop all fighting forever and I'm going to kill as many people as it takes for that to happen"? I'm struggling to think of one, although I'm sure my impressionistic take on the trope has exceptions out there.

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Nope! I wouldn't have even remembered Kenshin umprompted, even though we literally talked about him over the weekend. Remembering Trigun was a happy mistake.

 

My memory is terrible!

 

That said, in Rokka, the culprit never killed a single person, so that trope doesn't even apply!!! PHEW! In fact, someone else killed a bunch of people with the goal of peace (for her race).

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That said, in Rokka, the culprit never killed a single person, so that trope doesn't even apply!!! PHEW! In fact, someone else killed a bunch of people with the goal of peace (for her race).

 

Well, that's what I get for talking about a show that I didn't watch. I just feel for BadHat because, if a character starts talking about peace and is not clearly flagged as the protagonist in a show about nonviolence, then I know they're evil, stupid, or both.

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Well, also, make no mistake, Rokka is violent from minute one (no one dies, but the MC establishes pretty clearly that he has the power to do so and probably no qualms using said power), and it's never intended to be anything but. They're god-chosen Braves on a mission to kill the demon king (ostensibly (? (shit happens)) as heroes) and... well, that's really all you get until the room is locked and oops they have a seventh Brave instead of only six.

 

You never even see the demon king! Hell, they don't even get to the demon REALM.

 

Which is a big part of why I think Rokka is so interesting and good. It's not at all what you'd expect it to be, going in blind. Certainly wasn't what I expected. I was only in 'cause director of Spice and Wolf (delivered!) and Maoyuu (also delivered!).

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I make the distinction between the trope of a character using nonviolence or minimal violence to protect individual people or groups (the protagonists from Trigun and Rurouni Kenshin) and the trope of a character using violence or hyper-violence to enforce an abstract "peace" on everyone (every Naruto villain, every Gundam villain). They're both common, but they're very different from each other on a thematic level. You never see a protagonist who wants to end all war forever, for example, because the desire to protect people from harm is only laudable when it's feasible, hence the smaller scale. Impossible dreams that only hurt people in the process of being attempted are the province of antagonists only, except for certain subversions (Evangelion, for example, which asserts that all dreams are impossible and hurt people, but having no dream is even worse).

 

While I think this is largely true, Gundam franchise has a problem with this because lately main protagonists have gotten so powerful that they can literally jump in a battle and disable all combatants without killing them...   SEED is probably the best/worst example of this :x

 

You can probably tell I'm not a huge fan of the Gundam FRANCHISE (this is one of the reason why I love 0080 as much as I do).

 

Also I'm not sure where DBZ fits into this where every fight is to save the world but it is also microscopic (not in force but number of combatants, there is no politics about it).

 

Actually nvm, DBZ doesn't fit anywhere into this because Goku is so dumb and lacks any political view outside of fighting bad dudes that wants to destroy earth or whatever planet they are on.

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Also I'm not sure where DBZ fits into this where every fight is to save the world but it is also microscopic (not in force but number of combatants, there is no politics about it).

 

Actually...

 

Actually nvm, DBZ doesn't fit anywhere into this because Goku is so dumb and lacks any political view outside of fighting bad dudes that wants to destroy earth or whatever planet they are on.

 

Oh you already corrected yourself, teehee.

 

Well, also, actually...

 

All Goku really cares about is fighting strong dudes and getting stronger by doing so. He gives maybe a tiny shit about whether or not said strong dudes are evil, but for the most part he just likes fighting. I think it's just 'cause most people were introduced to the franchise with Z that everyone assumes he's a straight up Good Guy. He'll help people out here and there, but, like, in original DB, he had no qualms with killing anyone and everyone. But here comes Vegeta, a guy who literally wanted to destroy Goku's home, and Goku's like "nah let the guy live, I wanna fight him again". The English dub, I believe, tricked people into thinking he did it because he thought Vegeta might be good, or because he didn't like killing, but that's not how it was supposed to go down. Hah! Goku. What a clown.

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I don't know, can you give any examples of anime/manga protagonists who are like "I want to stop all fighting forever and I'm going to kill as many people as it takes for that to happen"? I'm struggling to think of one, although I'm sure my impressionistic take on the trope has exceptions out there.

Maybe Death Note? If you consider Light the protagonist?? (But im stretching & my memory of that series is incredibly bad)

I can definitely think of some series who's antagonist use that sort of logic though(scrapped princess, guren lagann, are the ones which come immediately to mind)

Besides i think the woman in question in rokka isn't a protagonist.

Tbh i ended up with far bigger problems with it though

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Maybe Death Note? If you consider Light the protagonist?? (But im stretching & my memory of that series is incredibly bad)

I can definitely think of some series who's antagonist use that sort of logic though(scrapped princess, guren lagann, are the ones which come immediately to mind)

Besides i think the woman in question in rokka isn't a protagonist.

 

I mean, my point was that sort of logic is a huge red flag for any series' ultimate antagonist and that is partially the reason why I find it the most boring of the stock "good" reasons for being evil. Scrapped Princess and Gurren Lagann are great examples of it, both of them well-executed beyond the rigor of the trope, while Death Note is... complicated but, opposed to the typical action of Aristotelian melodrama in anime, it's best explained as an Aristotelian drama where the flaw is hubris.

 

Isn't it funny that "drama" and "melodrama" have basically switched from their Aristotelian definitions? Calling something a "drama" just means that it's not a comedy, often involving no tragedy or injustice, while something that's a "melodrama" is typically thought to have the pathos that Aristotle would assign entirely to drama.

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I don't know, can you give any examples of anime/manga protagonists who are like "I want to stop all fighting forever and I'm going to kill as many people as it takes for that to happen"? I'm struggling to think of one, although I'm sure my impressionistic take on the trope has exceptions out there.

 

Homura

from Madoka Magica?

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Rokka no Yuusha was the best thing from last season. The ending was ultimately unimportant to what made the show great. The mystery was fine, but it's the ever-present tension that made it good, not the whodunnit part.

 

I'll also just say that for the vast majority of people watching the show, they didn't figure out the seventh right away. So, sucks for you that you got lucky, I guess? Like, you act like it was obvious, but there are lot of cues for every other character's "obvious" guilt, too.

 

Ultimately, I feel like if all you cared about while watching the show was "who is the bad guy", then, well, of course you didn't like it.

 

(Spoilers ahead.)

 

I don't disagree exactly, I actually enjoyed the show for the most part, but I think the tension was hurt by a couple of things. Firstly, you're right, most people probably didn't guess the seventh (looking at some reactions, it seems like a lot of people still thought it was Mora up until the end, which is like... come on), but actually I think it was kind of easy to guess if you thought it through enough? Gormongous' point has something to do with this but it's actually not how I knew. All it took was thinking forward to the end and figuring out who the most dramatic reveal would be. Adlet is out because we know he's innocent from his internal monologue, and they go to such lengths to prove Flamey/Fremy's innocence, so it most likely wasn't going to be her unless they pulled a big, dumb 180 (also she has the half-fiend thing, so it would have been too obvious). Nashetania is the only main character left, and conveniently the one with the least amount of suspicion cast her way, so of course it was going to be her. The rest of the cast are all side characters who would make for a really dull reveal. "Oh, it was Hans!" So what? Boooo. Anyway, being able to guess it didn't really ruin the show for me, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered finishing it, I just thought it was a little lazy.

 

The other thing that hurts the tension is how much stuff they invent out of whole cloth in order to either trap or exonerate characters. "The temple stays open once the seal is broken!" Okay, I can accept that. "Only one barrier can be set up in one place at a time!" What? Why? Whatever, I'll take it. "We found an extra set of tablets under the temple!" Okay, are you fucking kidding me? Mind you, this has everything to do with what I value in a good mystery, so if you enjoyed it then more power to you. I just don't find it intriguing at all when the audience isn't given the tools to at least conceive of a possible solution themselves. If you're going to have a bunch of weird fantasy rules and lore, at least lay them out at the outset instead of introducing a bunch of bullshit at the eleventh hour. That's not dramatic, it's just convenient.

 

All that aside, it was a pretty alright show for the most part. Ultimately the thing that made me regret watching was everything that happens in the final episode. I already had Nashetania picked, but I was expecting a more interesting motivation than "I'm a demon and sacrificing a bunch of people is the only way to attain TRUE PEACE muahahahahaha." Like Gorm said, that is literally the most played trope in the history of anime (or at least a close second behind guys accidentally knocking down the wall to the ladies side of a hotspring). It was already played when it was in every single SNES-era JRPG. So... yeah, after a fairly compelling build-up, I was pretty disappointed. Everything that follows that ("whaaaaaaaa, why are there seven of us again???" *sad trombone*) is like a bad sitcom or something. It seriously felt like they were trying to parody themselves.

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(Spoilers ahead.)

 

I don't disagree exactly, I actually enjoyed the show for the most part, but I think the tension was hurt by a couple of things. Firstly, you're right, most people probably didn't guess the seventh (looking at some reactions, it seems like a lot of people still thought it was Mora up until the end, which is like... come on), but actually I think it was kind of easy to guess if you thought it through enough? Gormongous' point has something to do with this but it's actually not how I knew. All it took was thinking forward to the end and figuring out who the most dramatic reveal would be. Adlet is out because we know he's innocent from his internal monologue, and they go to such lengths to prove Flamey/Fremy's innocence, so it most likely wasn't going to be her unless they pulled a big, dumb 180 (also she has the half-fiend thing, so it would have been too obvious). Nashetania is the only main character left, and conveniently the one with the least amount of suspicion cast her way, so of course it was going to be her. The rest of the cast are all side characters who would make for a really dull reveal. "Oh, it was Hans!" So what? Boooo. Anyway, being able to guess it didn't really ruin the show for me, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered finishing it, I just thought it was a little lazy.

 

The other thing that hurts the tension is how much stuff they invent out of whole cloth in order to either trap or exonerate characters. "The temple stays open once the seal is broken!" Okay, I can accept that. "Only one barrier can be set up in one place at a time!" What? Why? Whatever, I'll take it. "We found an extra set of tablets under the temple!" Okay, are you fucking kidding me? Mind you, this has everything to do with what I value in a good mystery, so if you enjoyed it then more power to you. I just don't find it intriguing at all when the audience isn't given the tools to at least conceive of a possible solution themselves. If you're going to have a bunch of weird fantasy rules and lore, at least lay them out at the outset instead of introducing a bunch of bullshit at the eleventh hour. That's not dramatic, it's just convenient.

 

All that aside, it was a pretty alright show for the most part. Ultimately the thing that made me regret watching was everything that happens in the final episode. I already had Nashetania picked, but I was expecting a more interesting motivation than "I'm a demon and sacrificing a bunch of people is the only way to attain TRUE PEACE muahahahahaha." Like Gorm said, that is literally the most played trope in the history of anime (or at least a close second behind guys accidentally knocking down the wall to the ladies side of a hotspring). It was already played when it was in every single SNES-era JRPG. So... yeah, after a fairly compelling build-up, I was pretty disappointed. Everything that follows that ("whaaaaaaaa, why are there seven of us again???" *sad trombone*) is like a bad sitcom or something. It seriously felt like they were trying to parody themselves.

 

I perhaps had different hopes for the series that most, 

I was really rooting for it to turn out the seventh was Goldov, but that he wasn't in control of the Fiends in any way. That he'd just faked his tattoo because he believed he was destined to be a Brave, and couldn't bear to parted from Nashetania. so we would have had all this setup about supernatural forces but it would have turned out they had all been killing each other due to one man's pride :D

But nah supernatural shenanigans ahoy!

 

I'm hoping for a Manchurian Candidate second season where it turns out it was Rokka all along and the series one villain was just there to make sure he seemed above suspicion :D

 

or at least i would be but i'm not sure i'll actually watch it because the fanservicey character design is really starting to get on my nerves

 

which brings me to..............

 

 

lol yep, it's the worst.

 

So I was thinking about fanservice last night, after twig said that he complained about it after every show we talked about.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that nobody cares when boobs are shown on Game of Thrones, Sopranos or Orange is the New Black, but draw some tits and all of a sudden it's weird and wrong.

 

Certainly in the case of GoT, there is worse stuff shown on that than even the most fan-servicey of shows.

 

I mean, it could be that because they're drawn, they're so much more easier to sexualise, which, yeah, that's a good point, but then again all western super heroes wear skin tight lycra, and are similarly drawn in ridiculous poses to show off assets. 

 

I guess I'm just getting more and more frustrated trying to forgive my personal favourite form of media, when literally every other form of media does it, and no-one bats an eyelid when it does. Sex sells, it's as simple as that, and it applies to literally everything.

 

I'm by no means saying it's right, I'm just saying I refuse to knock a great anime down like shokugeki no souma just because it wants to make a few more DVD sales by showing some boobs.

 

idk, what do you guys think?

 

 

So my feelings on this can be summed up in two words "boob plate" (I'm gonna say this is two words rather than one in the tradition of video games)

Boob plate is a near perfect example of why fan service of the kind that can be particularly prevalent in anime is bad, good character design is all about making what someone wears meaningful, to make them belong in the world of the story, to represent their choices. Fan Service in general and boob plate in particular are bad because they break immersion and take agency away from the character.

Additionally it's often not about if any skin is being shown it's how the camera reacts to it.

 

Looking at the examples you mention Food Wars/Shougeki no souma is both interesting and problematic at different times. Firstly lets get the good out of the way, in the world of Food Wars (i accidental capitalised World first time i wrote that which made me think of what would be a really weird MMO) the reasons for, and the amount of skin shown is actually fairly consistent between both genders, and arguably among the characters its a man who shows the most, and while some might find the idea of equating the taste of good food with sexually ecstasy a little creepy it is a consistent conceit that the show sticks too, it is how this particular world works. 

 

However Food Wars is far from problem free, because of how it chooses to populate that world and how it chooses to depict that ecstasy. The women in the world are almost uniformly generically beautiful, where as the men have a far greater range of age's and body types, something that becomes even more silly when you consider that even the one obvious exception (the old dorm mistress) conveniently transforms into a younger version of herself when "enjoying" the food :P  Then there's the problematic vibe to the way the show presents some of the women as being essentially enjoying the food against their will.

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Guess we're just spoiling it away, so whatever!

 

I completely disagree with the idea that there were only three "main characters" in Rokka.

 

The only one who was undeveloped was Goldov. He would've been a cheap reveal, because his entire character was "I LUB PRINCESS DUURRRRR", and I would've been super disappointed, but literally anyone else was open game (except MC, for reasons you stated).

 

The show throws so many red herrings at you that it's not necessarily out of the question for even Angry Lady to end up being the seventh, although I agree that people holding on to her were out of their mind, because it would've been too obvious.

 

Definitely could've easily been Hans, though. Glad it wasn't, 'cause he's rad.

 

I sort of agree that the ending was bunk, but also, it made me laugh. Like I legitimately laughed out loud when another seventh rolled on up. So, ya got me, Rokka! But even if it didn't, like I said before, the ending literally had no impact on my enjoyment of the show. It was everything between the beginning and the ending that made it great. You could safely ignore who the seventh actually was, and it'd still be a super strong show.

 

Also, yes, the show made it pretty clear very early on that we, as viewers, were not going to be able to solve the mystery. I dunno, I made peace with that with the first episode after shit went down.

 

Codi: the MC's name is Adlet. Rokka no Yuusha is the name of the show. Ya goof.

 

Also there's never going to be a second season.

 

Also barring stupid bunny ears princess and love-sick baby warrior, I actually thought all the costumes were good, ranging from nice to cool. Even Flamie's!

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You are off course 100% correct i have no idea why i decided Adlet was gonna get a random name change, I'd agree with you though that it never felt like much of a series about us finding the mystery out, it was more about enjoying watching them figuring it out.

Also i like that you abbreviate main character to MC.

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Hah that's a habit I picked up very recently. Probably from gaf, since I started participating in their anime thread recently.

Also, to expand on a previous thought I think I failed to properly communicate: in my opinion, no matter who the seventh was, you could've made the argument that they all had cliche reasons for being the seventh. And that was part of the fun for me, trying to decide which cliche was the one they were going to go with. Yeah bunny ears was cliche peace whatever, but everyone else had their own thing. Hell, so did MC, what with his world's strongest routine.

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I was actually holding out hope for one of two alternate endings:

 

1) There was no seventh, or at least not knowingly. The Demon King tricked a seventh person into thinking they were a brave in order to pit the braves against one another, but none of them actually had knowledge of it.

 

2) There were two "sevenths." The real sixth was kidnapped prior to the events and held prisoner somewhere so the tattoo wouldn't reveal they were missing. This actually made me suspect that it could've been Maura and Chamot working together for a bit, but like I said that kind of became too obvious.

 

Full disclosure: I have a habit of ruining shows for myself by overthinking them? But I kind of get enjoyment out of deconstructing things (even when I'm bad at it), so meh.

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Hah, well, we all enjoy things in our own way.

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So what have people been checking out in the new season?

There's a few things I've enjoyed in the opening barrage of new shows but the one I'm currently getting hyped up over due to the deadly combo of great lively op & understated art style and storytelling so far is The Perfect Insider.

http://youtu.be/Fa1ckFWKi-Y

Although it's way to early to make any big judgements i feel interested to see what a well resourced, character centric show in a contemporary setting can do. All in all i guess they've got my attention by avoiding being flashy and i hope people don't pass on it because the first episode is about building up the characters relationships rather than throwing out a flashy bit of animation or a juicy plot .

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