Lurker > CoolCly

Glad you enjoyed Rokka! It's a good example of a short fasted pace anime with good characters and action, and my favourite thing which is fighters with unique abilities having the opportunity to clash. As a mafia player, the mystery as a great premise that took it to the next level.

It was fun watching the characters work through the "logic" of the mystery but honestly - I had solved it long before that not based on the facts of the situation but on the behaviour of everyone. It's really interesting taking the lessons we learned playing board mafia and how town and scum players behave and then applying that on these anime characters trying to find the fake. I don't remember if you were a mafia player but that's what really clicked this anime for me

It is true that the story is a dead end - the anime won't be continuing, and even the light novel was abandoned eventually. If you are interested in seeing where the plot goes, this guy did a few videos on some of the future light novels and he has a fun and creative way of telling the story. I haven'twanted his other series since I never watched those series but I'd probably give it a try if I did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHhKRdGM7rY

Index would be such a good show if Index wasn't in it.

I really like Carole and Tuesday, the music is really great and having a tournament arc is always an easy way to showcase this kind of talent. It's unfortunate the writing is phoned in on a lot of one off episodes and weak side characters. The manager and that little robot thing were such a waste of time.

Angela and her sidekick guy are ok but not as good as they should be. Ertegun was the bomb.

Oh yeah, I suppose I'll choose Rokka

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1567928275913121792

Fascinating. Is this an actual "the king is dead, long live the king" official tweet?

Oh man, I've heard about the Saga of Tanya the Evil a lot and wondered if it's something I should try..... your writeup reminded me that I actually read the manga when it first started in 2016. I hated it. The setting is awesome, but the premise of this r/athiest guy being that girl with her attitude and demeaner was super flimsy, and the plan to "be a top magical soldier to earn a spot safe from danger" was just dumb as hell.

It's just constantly at odds with its own premise - this is when anime is at its worse imo. It doesn't know how to blend these different premises together when it comes to actually writing interesting dialogue or action scenes.

Overlord and... did Yakuza Reincarnation get an anime? Meh anyways.

I want to recommend Chivalry of a Failed Knight but I'm not sure it's really available in any legit ways, so I suppose I'll recommend Rokka - Braves of the Six Flowers.

It's about a pretty generic "group of chosen adventures set off to defeat the dark lord" story except they stop halfway to play a game of mafia.

Hey, what's with the perception lately that Part 4 is the best JoJo arc? Did they do it exceptionally well in the anime?

When I read the manga like 13 years ago, Stardust Crusaders was unquestionably the most loved arc with Battle Tendency being a somewhat distant second. Diamond is Unbreakable was considered to be a gigantic step down overall since the cast kinda sucks, especially the JoJo, with the saving grace being two GOD TIER characters in Rohan Kishibe and Yoshikage Kira. Was there just general swing over the years or did the anime cause this?

You mean for Faraway Paladin? A bit inconsistent - I haven't seen the light novel/anime, but I thought the first manga arc was fantastic, maybe a masterpiece. Mater materializing to protect Mary actually made me cry a little. After that when more general adventuring begins, it's fine I guess but was pretty aimless with fairly forgettable encounters and new characters that weren't that interesting or memorable. This round today of catching up on the 10-15 chapters I've been behind on were really great though.

Even when it's not too interesting, it's really well made at least, which I appreciate in the sea of generic isekai's i've been reading.

Looking at this anime episode list and - huh - it goes all the way to the chimera? That's pretty far - up to chapter 27 of the manga out of 47. That's actually the end of the part I thought was boring!

I was catching up on reading Faraway Paladin today and saw a bunch of comments saying that it along with Frieren are their favourite fantasy mangas atm, so I looked it up. I'm about 10 chapters in and this is the real deal.

It's like that "i killed slimes for 300 years" anime but with actual purpose

Secrets are one of the most satisfying things in gaming when they are done well - but mass produced collectable secrets kill games for me, or when I feel like the game has a bunch of secrets that I need to take the gameplay to a screeching halt so I can look in any nook and cranny for them, or when a secret is too good so you never find it

It's a big problem - they are so good but so hard to get right design wise

10/10 a masterpiece

one of the only games that actually has compelling branching story paths and difficult choices. you could argue it didnt go the full distance because there is a "best" way to go but dammmmmmnnn

I love the first Avengers movie. I think it's nearly perfect, and every line of dialogue is so good at moving things along while characterizing everybody and having them act exactly like they should based on the prior movies and for what they are experiencing now. After my rant about how Wanda's continuity is broken in the other topic - this is the opposite. Every character feels exactly like they should from where they left off in their own movies, which is one of the biggest accomplishments this movie could have had.

Also - this is a great video going through every piece of just one or two scenes from Avengers - but I feel like the whole movie is this good

Spoilers for the Black Widow move in this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iHzRB3gXZM

1/10

Nonsensical waste of time that completely squandered some good gameplay ideas.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

I don't see how Wanda's characterization was wrong (aside from that shitty line at the end of WandaVision). She was always heading deeper and deeper into her own madness and desperation to have any kind of semblance of belonging or for anyone to truly care about her.

She lost her parents, then lost her brother, was outcasted from being a beloved hero and hated by everyone, then lost her lover, and she was desperate to give herself any sort of happiness.

So after being woefully alone after Avengers Endgame, she created her own world where things were simple and she could be loved again. And when that was shattered, she had a taste of her perfect life and while Vision made it clear he didn't want any part of it, she still wanted to at least have her children. And so she went deeper and more desperate and found bad book to try to use it but it ended up making her use it for more sinister purposes.

It's a pretty understandable and natural descent to villainy. I don't think it was out of nowhere at all.

This is a good summary of things Wanda has gone through if you ignore anything she has actually said or done or tried to do

Re: all the stuff at the end of WandaVision - I completely agree Wanda is let off easy at the end of show - that was already a complaint I had about WandaVision itself - the ending does not line up tonally with what actually happened in the show - it's a hastily written hand wave to KIND OF bridge the gap to MoM - which it completely falls short of doing too, so it weakly ends the show and doesn't really connect to the movie. NOT GOOD

Really, any justification on why she is the way she is in MoM that hinges on that last scene where she flies away from town or the fact that she's reading the Darkhold don't really hold much weight - they are just as much the problem.

scarletspeed7 posted...

She sacrificed nothing for them - those children never existed.

was that Vision never real either?

but then again it bad book

I agree that she's not really appearing to show remorse in the scene where they'll never know what she sacrificed for them :) but I don't agree that means she didn't have remorse. Her actions already clearly showed that she did.

To say she's not reformed - I'd agree in the sense that she has a lot to do to make up for this and has to show she's clearly intentionally making good choices in the future - but it's pretty unquestionable to me that she's chosen the path of redemption.

Reading the book isn't really a sign towards villainy - the show portrays the Darkhold more as her birthright and something she has a lot to learn from rather than just corrupting evil. Agatha probably would have used it for bad but that doesn't mean it had to be.

What *REALLY* caused this is production timing. MoM went into production with this idea of making Wanda the villain, and at the time they clearly did not know how well WandaVision was going to turn out and how cathartic and endearing her story of grief would be. WandaVision *could* have gone a different way and ended with Wanda on a more villainous path - the pieces were all there. That may be why they ended it the way they did with her leaving. But that's really not at all the story they told or the person they built her up to be. The reason there is such a gigantic disconnect between MoM and WandaVision is because they took two completely different approaches to writing her and did not put in the time and effort to get these lined up.

The result is that she's fantastic as a monster in MoM individually, but does not have any consistency with WandaVision - the connection is just straight up broken.

At this point, I have to ask. Why doesn't anybody seem to care about this? Is everybody just turning off their brain and enjoying these movies as dumb popcorn flicks? Quite frankly - that's never how I've seen the Marvel movies. I've always been very impressed individually with each movie but more importantly the consistency in the world building, character arcs, and power levels as characters show up in all kinds of different places. It's one of my favourite things to see in fiction when they do this well. Which is a bit funny considering one of the only people I've seen criticize this Wanda problem so heavily is Brandon Sanderson on his Intentionally Blank podcast - and he's known for essentially having an MCU of his own in how all his novels are connected....

Anyways - Wanda and Vision have always been a bit derided by fans of the movies- Age of Ultron, Civil War, and Endgame all had people saying "I don't care about these guys, they barely had any time at all". But I never felt that way. I always liked their little bit pieces in the story - I liked that the MCU would spare just a bit of time to have these smaller characters that aren't the main focus of the story - we can just check in with them now and then in different properties to see how they've changed or grown. That's one of the strongest aspects of the MCU - that makes it such a cut above basically any other franchise, and why everything in Infinity War / Endgame was so meaningful. It wasn't just mindless action with a bunch of action figures I know the names of - these characters all mean something to me after seeing everything gone through.

But if the MCU is just going to throw anything this in the trash now - what's the point of continuing to care? It's dipping further and further into multiverse shenanigans which inherently creates a risk of "none of this matters", but they are showing in many ways that they don't really care at all anymore.

Any individual movie in the past had flaws you could point to, but I think Phase 4 movies and the shows have been much worse. It seems clear to me that they are pushing these projects out, and where before I always felt they were doing their best and there were just a few aspects that weren't quite up to par despite best efforts, now I feel like it's more like "just make it good enough and don't worry about the parts that are bad". In Black Widow, they really do not care at all in maintaining believability that Natasha could survive any of that (plus the villain was garbage). In Falcon and the Winter Soldier, they just have such dumb stuff like having them bust Zemo out of prison immediately for no reason after trying nothing - it seems like they just don't care about maintaining a semblance of continuity.

WandaVision was nearly perfect except for a few glaring issues they could have fixed if they just took a bit more time ironing them out. TFATWS, Loki, and Hawkeye are swimming with issues despite the parts that are good. Is this the way that most projects are gonna go?

No Way Home was awesome, so I'll probably catch individual movies that catch my eye, but continuing to follow every project and seeing how it all ties together - this seems to be something I just shouldn't care about anymore.

So anyway. Multiverse of Madness. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It ruined the MCU forever and I hate it.

CoolCly posted...

So I saw Multiverse of Madness.

Great movie, lots of really cool action, the horror bend was fantastic with a lot of crazy shit. Doctor Strange himself was maybe the best he's been in the entire MCU. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It ruined the MCU forever and I hate it. I'll never forgive this movie.

So anyways going back to this post I made

SPOILERS FOR MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS AND WANDAVISION

This really comes down to Wanda. If you look at this movie in isolation, she's phenomenal. An extremely creative and unstoppable movie monster, probably one of the best villains / obstacles in a Marvel movie to date. That scene attacking the temple where she climbs out of the mirror? She fit into Sam Raimi's style beautifully, it's like she was meant for this.

....Except, she wasn't. Her motivation of wanting to help her kids wasn't too fleshed out other than basic mothers instinct, but if you haven't seen WandaVision its probably good enough to just be like "ok yeah this was probably established in WandaVision" and accept it as is. But.... this wasn't really established in her show at all - in fact, the opposite was established. She did do some pretty monstrous things in the way she used the town - she was in essence a villain that abused the people of Westview. This is partly justified in showing that this was a grief mechanism that she was going through and her powers mostly did this on auto pilot to give her what she needed to grieve, so she wasn't fully aware of the harm she was putting through. We do see that she kinda did know, which puts a lot of culpability on her. In the end, though, when she's truly faced with what she's done, she does recognize that this is wrong and she can't continue to do this - and chooses the ultimate sacrifice of essentially killing her two kids and this version of Vision in order to release the towns people. The journey along the way with her new family was fantastic, and that last scene with Vision in the living room was incredibly touching. I'd say WandaVision was borderline a masterpiece except for a few glaring problems

a) the side stuff with Rambeau, Kat Dennings, and Agent Woo were great to begin with, but that sideplot got worse and worse with the SWORD leader guy to the end that all these characters felt extremely tacked on. The SWORD guy being like "WANDA IS BAD" and the trio being like "no she's good actually!" felt very contrived on both sides.

b) Agatha was wonderful in a lot of ways but their fight ends up falling a bit flat

c) Wanda flies off after releasing the town as if she can just pretend she didn't hold them all hostage as a supervillain. Yeah, she gave up her children and Vis, but this doesn't feel like taking responsibility, it felt like running away.

Now, going into MoM - we have a Wanda who was extremely grief stricken after losing Vision to Thanos (and also practically killing him herself) and creates mini universe using other people to live out her dream life. She realizes this is wrong and that she has to move on from her grief, and that hurting these townspeople for her idyllic life is not okay. (It's very clear that her sitcom Vision would never have been okay with letting this continue and she would have had to force him to play along like everyone else, but I do think this was an inherent realization on her own part rather than just being pushed to this choice by Vis). So this Wanda releases the hex and Vis and her children disappear. Then she flies off with the darkhold and researches a possible way to find her family again.

So we get into MoM- and what is Wanda like - she's dark and twisted by the Darkhold, and she's driven solely by the goal of finding her boys. She wants to take her place as their mother - so she wants to use America to go to another universe to find some kids to adopt. She's willing to do whatever it takes to do this, and that really does mean "whatever.".

1) she sent monsters to other dimensions to capture America so she could kill America and take her powers. We know that these monsters killed at least one other version of Doctor Strange - so even though we don't know it's her right then - we now know that she was willing to kill basically anyone in another universe if they get in her way. later, we see her kill all those heroes in the other universe with only slight annoyance. she may not even see them as people

2) she kills many sorcerer's in Kamar Taj. These people certainly aren't bad guys, but they aren't even really neutral - the would probably generally be considered protectors of the world and it's people. They may have even fought in the final battle against Thanos. She's murdering a bunch of good guys here. She made some small attempt at "come on guys, just hand her over so I don't have to kill you all" so it wasn't without second thought.... but that thought was dismissed pretty quickly. She is fine murdering a whole lot of good people to get what she wants.

3) When asked what she would do to the Wanda that is already the mother to her children... she hesitates to answer. Because the answer is she is going to murder that Wanda and take her place. She is going to kill the mother of these two boys so she can have her perfect fantasy life with them.

4) When Wong asks why she's going to all these lengths when she probably could have just gotten America to help her do this the right way..... she just says that she needs to take America's powers for herself JUST IN CASE anything ever might go wrong in the future..... what if her boys get sick??? she might need to go to another universe to find the answer, so she needs this power at her finger tips! This is pure megalomania - she's not doing this killing because its just the absolutely way to get what she wants - which would have already been very bad. She's doing it just because she might as well go 10 extra miles. This character is pure evil.

So - how does this jive with how WandaVision left her? The Wanda that let her two actual children and the love of her life fade away so that a town of random people can move on with their lives. Would that Wanda have done ANY of this? HELL NO. That Wanda would be fighting tooth and nail against this Wanda. It's a completely different person.

Going back to my complaints about WandaVision - complaint B really has no relevance here. In complaint A - the side characters steadfastly saying "Wanda is a hero! we can trust her to do the right thing!" look REALLY ****ING STUPID now. The SWORD guy was basically right to take the shot at her at every opportunity. She was doing bad things then, and then went on to do MUCH MUCH WORSE things now. Problem C really bugged me when WandaVision ended, but everyone I talked to basically said "this will probably be addressed in Multiverse of Madness, don't worry about it". Holy **** is this the opposite. They didn't just not address the fact that she left out facing any repercussions for her actions - they destroy the credibility she had just earned by returning the town back to normal. The continuity from WandaVision to MoM is just not there - and further stains what was an otherwise phenomenal show.

But how did we get here? Why did Wanda have such a dramatic change? Well - the movie's excuse is that the Darkhold corrupts things, so shes bad now! Really? Does anybody actually accept this? You can take any character with emotional growth and nuance and just say "well they had possession of an evil thing in between movies so they are bad now". Doctor Strange has his third eye now - I guess next movie it will be totally fine for him to go on murder sprees - that's just who he is now. The Darkhold isn't a valid excuse - it's just all that there is to cover up this gigantic hole in storytelling.

Lopen posted...

I mean whatever guys.

I'm just saying

1. Ant-Man wasn't mainstream relevant before the MCU to any remotely notable degree.
2. Among comic book nerds, which are a huge minority in and of themselves, he isn't vastly better known than Shang Chi.

The scarlet appreciation squad teaming up to repeat the same thing when your silver bullet is supporting roles in a few (imo obscure) animated series is not convincing. Next you're gonna tell me Silver Samurai is super well known cause he was in a few Marvel games and an X-Men episode.

But who cares you don't need to convince me. Just move on with your lives.

What is this? Shang-chi is like, D list. Ant-man is literally a founding member of the Avengers.... even if you could argue their comic appearances are similar (they aren't even close), there was tons of articles appearing beginning in 2012 being like "akshually some of the founding main avengers aren't even here! it's Ant-man and the Wasp!"

Oh I missed this topic, might have to give these a watch

A lot of hype for Infinity Train in this topic.... Seems promising.

Can someone that recognizes that She-ra is a baby show for babies let me know know if Infinity Train is actually good.

I love the first Captain America movie - Cap's journey is very compelling, and Peggy is exceptional. By far the best love interest, and she's much more than that. She could be the hero herself - which is why she actually has been on at least three different occasions. I'm actually a bit confused why you mention she just has some cameos - do you know about all of her appearances?

The Red Skull is really great for most of the movie - but he feels a bit superflous towards the end. Overall the third act is a lot weaker - I kinda dislike the Tesserect technology - it just feels too space age and not WWII era with a strong energy source. I wish they had put a bit more effort towards making the guns feel a little more of a fusion between futuristic and the technology of the era - maybe a bit more steam punk.

Just feels completely off seeing all these WWII soldiers running around and some just get vaporized by these space guns.

Personally, I loved the manga a lot more than the anime for AssClass. There's tons of little jokes in the background of the frame that don't come across in the anime as they focus on whatever is actually happening. Felt like just half the of what it should be.

some real top tier memes up in this topic

it's a perfect game

Just cutting out the second part of my post as if it didn't even occur in his brain so he can go on one of his youtuber tangents is the most perfect LMS response I can imagine

It wasn't sarcasm btw

So I saw Multiverse of Madness.

Great movie, lots of really cool action, the horror bend was fantastic with a lot of crazy shit. Doctor Strange himself was maybe the best he's been in the entire MCU. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It ruined the MCU forever and I hate it. I'll never forgive this movie.

oh hype, this is one of my favourite games of all time. OB64 next plz

true, we need girlfriends thoughts

https://phynixpcs.com/

behold survivors of the Artesian Builds disaster starting their own company

You have a lot of real unorthodox shit up in here

Hex-A-Ring is trash but Hex-A-Gone is a masterpiece

There's a lot of people who hate the MCU because they just can't stand RDJ and his performance as Tony Stark. That's so unfortunate for those people. He really made magic happen in Iron Man and I feel like he only got better and better as the movies went on. Love him.

As someone who considers himself a casual Frasier enjoyer my recognition of characters in that tier list fell off REAL quick

This topic pushed me to go read the manga. I'd originally seen the anime when it came out so I'd seen up to Boros, but it was fun to read from the beginning

I'm at chapter 94 so pretty far into this MA arc

One thing I don't really get is why this series is so reluctant to ever kill heroes - when rampant civilian deaths were so common as a joke early on and have happened a lot since. It feels like the writing, by imitating the material it's satirizing so perfectly, is succumbing to the very action tropes it's supposed to mock. I have noticed that Garo not killing anybody is an intentional narrative choice and not bad writing though.

I'm pretty ambivalent about this. But mostly it just makes me think about how much my precious Wheel of Time SUCKED and now I'm mad

This show looks bad >:(

gave it a try! pretty fun game

sad that cheaters are so quick to destroy the leaderboards =(

that looked like an absolute miss on the tone of Trigun....

it's too late, i already watched dunkey's video

Wordle 358 1/6



HELLLLL YEAH

I was filling in the signups to get into the beta for Ben Brode's new Marvel phone card game and it asked what phone I had. It listed a ton of Google Pixels beginning with 3... but not my Google Pixel 2.

Am I a dinosaur?

i tuned in but this seems like a senile old man talking to himself about nothing

i have no idea what he has said

i thought he was getting to a good part when he started talking about "the future" and being self employed but then ??????????????

is this what giant bomb is

do we know length of episodes?

you could cover a lot of ground in live action with good pacing in hour long episodes. it would be insane to try to cover one piece arcs in anything remotely similar length of episodes that the anime does

also that actor managed to convince me that he has the energy for Luffy very quickly there

this showrunner certainly has a dream with these gigantic colourful ship sets and i have to respect that

btw does the game that breaks through get to take the casts of the games that didnt?

I was just talking about this with my fighting game obsessed friend - do you guys think Multiversus has a chance to break through to the really main stream?

I feel like Nick absolutely did but flubbed it due to a few things like lack of voice acting and the very fast gameplay being unfriendly to casuals. I think a game still could - but how many crossover platform fighters get this chance before it becomes not that interesting to anybody?

That's interesting, they are still trying to make this game...

I wonder how player retention is. I bought the game and played it for a couple days but I doubt even this will get me to try it again.

Is the game still hyper fast?