#AND ITS REMINDING HIM OF THE FIRST TIME HE FED AND alSO BLAKE WAS SCARY IN TAT MOMENT

[eric-the-bmo]

hi everyone. blake with blowing eyes and pinning down the lady with his claws and biting into her. and leo just. freezing and backing away. and then blake is just vibing later like he didnt just fucking do that

[pomegranate-salad]

Seeds of thought : Wicdiv #32 & #33

Work work work work work. I’ve never worked so much in my life. The college student easy life is a lie, kids. So I’m doing a 2-in-1 type of thing on the last two issues. I didn’t have much material on issue 32 alone anyway and I think these two issues make more sense as a two-parter finale, so I guess it works well. Thoughts and opinions under the cut, spoilers of course. And fuck Woden.

 THE LAST LAUGH

 “Well this looks ridiculous”

This was my - and I assume an unneglectable number of people’s – first reaction to the last page of issue #33 in which we see the severed heads of Lucifer, Inanna and Tara displayed on an altar. This scene was probably effective on some, but for me it immediately called back to Disney’s Haunted Mansion and Futurama, and I was effectively done for : there was no way I could take this visual seriously.

There’s no two ways around it : this scene is silly. First we have what should be one of the biggest reveal of the entire series casually thrown at us by a character who’s not even looking at the audience, Then the camera cuts to this grotesque display of living heads, and the scene is complete with a classic Luci one-liner that seems aware of how out-of-place this entire sequence is. Really, all that’s missing is the laugh track.

You could say anticlimactic ; but really should it be called that when it’s the creators themselves who intentionally destroy the dramatic potential of their own scene ? If you’re not convinced this was intentional, try a little thought experiment and imagine rewriting this scene to amplify its dramatic intensity. By doing so, my conclusion is that this ending had every chance of being a huge finisher like the ones we saw in Fandemonium and Rising Action, but every writing and artistic decision was deliberately made to be as wrong as possible, to ruin every emotional weight this scene could have had.

 This is not an anomaly : in these last two issues, the creators seem to have engaged in the systematic destruction of every dramatic beat by way of grotesque and ridicule. It’s an undercurrent that ran through the entire second part of Imperial Phase, but only reached its full potential toward the end.

It started on the very first page of issue #32, trivializing Amaterasu’s death when the issue before that still gave it all the gravity fitting to the first death of a Wicdiv arc. Then Dio’s last moments of bravery reveal themselves to be a total waste, on top of ruining One More Time forever. Even Woden’s bad guy monologue is sort of too shitty to really muster the kind of epic hatred you’d want to direct at this character. Then we have Sakhmet’s death, caused not by her lover or her sort-of-nemesis Baal, but by a thirteen year old on her first kill. And that’s not even touching on the awful reminder of her fate we get at the end of issue #33. Then there’s of course the beep machine, and issue #32’s hilarious finish, which I think call for no commentary. Issue #33 is divided in two big reveals, the first one forcing on the us the awful visual of David Blake’s head on Woden’s suit and one of the most fist-curling yet somehow pathetic bad guy monologues in history, and the second one being that ridiculous finish scene. The two are even separated by an intimate scene between Cass and Laura that literally gets cut because there’s a stranger tied up two feet from them.

 So if these issues somewhat feel like they’re played all wrong, we know where it comes from. They feel like a multipart climax that got flipped on its head, so not a punch would land or beat would work. That’s not to say there aren’t some really impressive character moments in there ; but for each of them, there’s an inversely proportionally bad joke or ironic twist sweeping right in to undercut the whole thing.

And that’s something worth examining, not as a mistake but as a creative direction. Humour used to be a respite in Wicdiv, a welcome break from all the bleakness and emotional scorching of the characters. Each of them had their own wit, from Luci’s cool girl referencing to Baphomet’s failed swagger, to even Cass’ dry deliveries. But now, humour is just another weapon to hurt us. It prevents us from caring about our characters, from connecting with their emotions, from taking the story seriously. As I was reading through what I knew were Dio’s last moments, all I could focus on was Woden’s villain’s speech and the fact that he was right, and that Dio’s death was probably going to be a complete waste, because that’s how Wicdiv works now. Just compare the weight of Amaterasu’s and Dio’s respective death scenes : they’re not even separated by a full issue, yet the light that’s shone on them is completely different. No matter how much dignity went into crafting Dio’s last scene, it doesn’t matter when it’s put back to back with the textual affirmation of its uselessness, the fact that we don’t even get to give him a proper goodbye, and even after that, Laura’s awful line about his life support. In 2017, I don’t think I need to explain anyone the power of humour in trivializing the most terrible situations and undercutting people’s empathy for each other. This is what Wicdiv has been doing to us these past two issues, against our will. Stopping us from caring. Keeping us at bay even when we’re trying to connect and get involved in the story and characters.

 What does this change in the use of humour mean ? Personally, I link it to the change of our purported hopes as an audience. At the beginning of the comic and up until Imperial phase, we were still allowed to believe, like Luci, that a solution could be found, that the 2-year sentence wasn’t real, nor was the great Darkness. That it was going to be okay. But right at the moment when the characters allowed themselves to think that there could indeed be a solution, we, as an audience, started to know better : there was no loophole, no escape, no way to prevent the inevitable, whatever that was. We could no longer hope that things were going to be okay. So what do you hope for when things cannot be okay ? You hope that they’ll be worth it. If you have to die, let it be a worthy death. A beautiful one. If you have to go, go in a blaze of glory. If you have to fail, let it be at the hand of a worthy foe. Let it be worth it.

But it isn’t. And that’s what humour’s there to prove. When our hopes were that things would be okay, the comic responded with tragedy ; now that we simply want them to be worth it, its weapon of choice is ridicule. As such, it’s definitely not a coincidence that the 455AD special preceded Imperial Phase part II, as it sets the tone for the entire arc, up to its back quote : when it’s clear Lucifer won’t be able to outlive his death sentence, all he want is to be allowed to burn. But he won’t be. He will bleed out and his body will be dragged across and city and cut to pieces by an old lady then fed to the river. Such is the fate that awaits our character. Pathetic and grotesque in equal parts, useless unless it serves someone else’s purpose, following rules you do not understand.

If Imperial Phase is the arc in which the gods are allowed to think themselves kings and queens, then the creators are the King’s fools, the ones allowed to tell them their real value because they do it through jokes and flip-overs.

This arc is a constant battle between the story the characters wish they were in and the one they’re actually in. That’s why it would be wrong, for example, to think of the beep machine as a McGuffin : its thematic utility goes beyond a plot device. When just last arc, it was the subject of a joke to relieve the tension between two characters, now it knocks them back to their actual scope. Something so small and silly is the kind of device they deserve. The big, ugly, scary machine ? It does nothing. Did you think you’d be handed a huge plot revelation as the crowning achievement of this arc ? Of course not. Instead, what we get is a sad, banal story of parental abuse from a man who’s not over leaving his youth behind.

Yes, even the David/Jon Blake storyline, arguably the one preserving most of its dramatic intensity over these two issues, cannot help but feel like a sad joke when you consider that David Blake’s motivations are basically the evil queen from Snow White’s. This is what caused all this. This, an old wrinkled lady, and a thirteen year old on a mission from God. Those are our villains, everybody. As for dying a worthy death, our heroes’ options are a pool of blood or a mounted head on an altar.

 None of this is worth it. At this point, it’s even hard remember why “this” sounded so appealing in the first place. And all this goes to contextualize even more Laura’s breakdown speech halfway through issue #33 : she wanted everything they had, and she’d have given anything for it. For power, for glamour, for this. For this joke of a fate that’s not even that funny. That’s what cost her the death of her family, multiple friends, and the rest of her life.

It’s also fitting that Jon finally voices something that has been on my mind for a long time : just how little do you have to think of yourself to think two years of superpowers would be worthier than a fully-lived life ? Through this character who, just like the other gods, is too good for this deal, but unlike them, seems to realize it, it’s yet again the sheer impossibility to make this deal worth it that’s shown to us. Because what becomes clear after this reveal is that if Ananke allowed you to become a god, it’s so she could see that you’d waste away your potential. House always wins, and when you burn the House down, another opens up next door.

 So this is where we are : our hopes of seeing any of it be worth it have been ridiculed, and all that’s left to uncover is precisely which joke our heroes have been the butt of. Cruel ? Maybe. But if fiction so often serves as a way to quench our thirst for grand emotions and epic stories, it’s precisely because outside of it, it feels much more often like one big joke than a sweeping tragedy. After all, Henri Bergson said it best : comedy is much truer to real life than drama.

  WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE ISSUES

 I KNEW IT IT WAS ME I FIGURED IT OUT I KNEW IT WAS DAVID BLAKE I AM THE GODDESS OF FATE BOW TO ME MERE MORTALS !

Alright, I’ll stop.

But while seeing yourself being right is immensely satisfying, it cannot help but damage your read a little ; like I said many times before, I want writers to be smarter than me, to be able to take me by surprise. So if I’ve managed to guess something, that’s great for my ego, but it also makes me a bit sad : that’s just another plotpoint that won’t reach full impact with me because I had so much time interiorizing its potential.

And that’s sort of my problem with these two issues : they revolve around two kinds of plotpoints, some that didn’t surprise me (Dio and Sakhmet’s death, Woden’s identity, the reason for Laura’s attitude) and other that were impossible to guess (the beep machine, Minerva’s “identity”, the talking heads). Meaning that while reading those, I was pretty much letting the plot carry me without being able to pause and care. As I’ve said above, part of it is intentional, but it also means that there aren’t many punches in these issues that landed for me. I’ll definitely count Laura and Sakhmet’s last conversation as well as Cass and Laura’s fight as a success, but the “big” intimate moment of issue #33, the conversation between Cass and Laura, didn’t do much for me, probably because it seems to me that anyone with a functioning brain and ears knew exactly why Laura wasn’t her best self since she had become Persephone. I understand why Cass didn’t see it – as we’re discussed before, she is a factual thinker, meaning she can’t grasp with Laura’s guilt when it is so obviously unfounded – but I still don’t understand the decision to make this a big character moment when literally every sentence Laura had pronounced since the beginning of Imperial Phase revealed what she was going through. There’s nothing more infuriating that being fed information you already think of as canon. If you ask me, this moment is much more important and interesting for what it isn’t, that’s to say a romantic scene, than for what it is. Seeing Laura being rejected by Cass, and therefore breaking the pattern  of dragging people in her self-destroying orbit, is much more defining than her whole speech on guilt.

The problem is that most of the work these issues do is retrospective : if the Jon/David scene on its own has limited impact, the new depth it gives to all the Woden scenes we’ve already been through is vertiginous. Like I said, I did consider what the meaning of David Blake being Woden would be, but that’s another thing to be confronted with the actual fact. When you consider that David is talking to his decapitated, imprisoned son when he’s pouring out his thoughts make issue #14 go from merely quite repulsive to one of the most skin-crawlingly nauseating pieces of media ever written. I can’t imagine what the creators went through crafting this issue while knowing the entire story.

 As for the rest of the reveals, it’s a little hard to weigh on them without devolving into hardcore theorizing. We’re basically at the last stop before the comic has to lay out its hand ; it already managed to delay it through two entire arcs whose very point was to see how long they could get this blind game going. But for me as a reader, it also means I’m at the point in the story that’s the least interesting to me : the one where I have no choice than to follow the train as it’s well on its tracks, without any possibility to pause or jump ahead. I have to wait for the full story to know whether any of these twists paid out or not ; at this stage, I have both too much and too little to really be able to do something with it emotionally or intellectually.

 So as a final verdict because I have to go back to cramming for administrative litigation, I’d say these are two issues I’ll have to revisit once the comic is over, because I suspect they’ll be a lot better with the full story in hand. Most of its impact is on the issues before them and in the groundwork they lay out for the final year. So as a stop point, they may not hold much interest, but I can definitely see them be one of the comic’s most astute cogs once it’s done and over. As a two-parter finale, I like it more than the Imperial Phase (part I) finale : it’s more coherent in its construction and doesn’t try to bite off more than it can chew. It’s mostly plotpoints and twists, meaning it’s my least favourite kind of read, but once I’m able to put that aside to see it instead as a character work thread in a bigger design, it’ll probably hold my interest much more. But as of right now, I can at least commend it for how much it makes me want to reread everything from the beginning. Which I definitely do not have the time for right now. Damn you. Damn you all.

[recentanimenews]

Donyatsu is a Sweet, Unexpected Surprise

Donuts. Donuts never change.

The irrelevant and strange post-apocalyptic world of Yusuke Kozaki’s Donyatsu, a silly slice-of-life series about pastry-inspired critters, is a welcomed and eccentric break from reality. Adapted into a 12-episode original net animation series (ONA) by studio Gathering from Kozaki’s manga in 2013, Donyatsu provides a seemingly standard post-apocalyptic setting with a sweet slice-of-life twist. It dares ask the question—can the end of the world be funny? Can it be about cats and delicious treats while the world burns?

Kozaki’s work has mostly been seen in anime and video game character design—most notably in the Fire Emblem and Pokémon franchises, BBK/BRNK, and Speed Grapher. After debuting in Young Gangan in 2011, the Donyatsu manga soon garnered a cult following for its unique combination of post-apocalyptic story with slice-of-life comedy. I first discovered the series back in 2015 and considered it something of a “hidden gem” at the time through the short net anime. However, I quickly realized that these handful of episodes provided just a glimpse of what the full and bizarre Donyatsu world had to offer. The main appeal of Donyatsu is that it obviously has no large overarching plot—in fact, most of its characters struggle to achieve more than sleeping and eating. Compared to other post-apocalyptic series, the worst of the final blow has already landed and there’s no going back. It's a surprisingly laid-back, empty world.

Donyatsu and Bagel making friends 

  Black Comedy With Sugar On Top

Our hero, Donyatsu, wakes up one day to realize he is now an adorable chocolate donut-shaped cat. Has he been transformed for a human? It’s not clear. The Shibuya streets might be empty, but in lieu of humans are a handful of new friends: Bagel, a basic but stern brown bagel cat; Rollnya, a sweet (you guessed it) roll-themed cat; Baum Cougar, the baumkuchen cat who is also a genius internet hacker; and Kumacaron, the pink macaron bear who loves the in-world "Dragon Fall" manga. There’s also a military squadron of mice who may or may not actually be a threat. Is anyone here terrified by what appears to be a nameless catastrophy? Or civilization as we know it coming to a halt? No, Donyatsu and pals are too busy playing shiritori with a giant space robot instead. Even Baum Cougar, the most prepared of the kitties, is a jab at stereotypical “preppers” and nerds who spend too much time meticulously planning out end-of-world survival scenarios. Will he be their savior in the end times? Well, no. In fact, he’s sort of a creep. They’re all jerks.

Ironically, despite being friends, Donyatsu and pals all kinda hate each other. Unlike other laid-back slice-of-life series, these characters truly have no choice but to involuntarily put up with each other. Donyatsu is bullied by the others in almost every episode. At first it’s a bit odd, since these characters don’t typically seem like the kind to be mean or spiteful. In the end, it’s Donyatsu himself who ends up being the butt of jokes, who personally admits that maybe he isn’t quite as funny or smart as the others. At first I thought, “well, that’s a little sad,” but over time I came to love it—especially after reading the manga, where Kozaki’s sick and silly sense of humor truly shines. Donyatsu is meant to make you feel good, but maybe at these cute animals' expense.

Rudeness without reason is the point. Despite it being the end of the world, despite being adorable pastry animals, Donyatsu and his friends are still all undeniably, selfishly human. Think of house cats. You think they care when they knock over your priceless, priceless treasures? Hell no. Don’t let the cute demeanor fool you. They are cruel, cruel folks.

The mice stab Donyatsu with a fork. Ouch.

When I first showed Donyatsu to a friend five years ago, they said it reminded them of the cartoon Adventure Time—which has been confirmed by its creator Pendleton Ward to also be set in a post-apocalyptic world. When I thought of how strange and illogical those characters acted, I realized I knew why Donyatsu appealed so much to me. What makes Donyatsu’s cutesy, over-the-top post-apocalyptic setting so appealing despite the dreary background story? It might be the humor of cognitive dissonance, that situations like devastated cities and the destruction of human civilization aren’t inherently meant to be “funny” unless you’re very jaded. While the Donyatsu anime itself doesn't fully explore these themes compared to the source material, the understanding that these wacky adventures all take places after a catastrophic, humanity-ending event adds an extra layer to an already strange concept. Cats can’t think that far ahead until there’s a yummy snack at the other end. But us viewers? Their situation really is hard to stomach.

One Donyatsu skit involves Kumacaron reading manga out loud while Donyatsu and Bagel are cooped up in Baum Cougar’s safehouse. Familiarity soon breeds contempt, and in this case just enough contempt for Bagel to smack Kumacaron silly after reading all the over-the-top shounen manga dialogue. In the original manga, the group goes to a supermarket in search of canned goods, but quickly devolves into toilet humor and a strategic joke about karinto cookies (look them up). There's no dramatic build-up or sense of urgency to seek out real survival. It's not that Donyatsu and friends don't care—they're lucky enough to not know they should care. They get fed up with each other, bully and harass, all normally high-stakes, dramatic moments when looking at your last handful of post-apocalyptic survivors, but here it’s just good old-fashioned slapstick.

Donyatsu and Bagel

A returning group of characters, the mice, meanwhile, are framed as villains. The joke is, of course, they’re tiny mice with military helmets with forks as their weapons. At first, they seem like they might pose a challenge to Donyatsu, but surprisingly (and albeit with some body horror-esque realizations about how donut cat physiology works…) Donyatsu’s flesh heals itself. You literally can’t eat donut cats. It turns out they are maaaybe immortal. In a perfect world, Donyatsu could let the mice eat him and then just regenerate over a few days—but that’s missing the point entirely. Donyatsu and friends aren’t that preoccupied with “survival” and “consuming” like the mice, so the thought likely has never crossed their mind. They just wanna hang out. In volume two of the manga, Bagel wonders how long they have until they all run out of food and starve to death. It’s a briefly sobering moment that acknowledges these characters might have an actual life expectancy. Everyone is deathly quiet, wondering when they might die. And then it’s immediately back to jokes. There are no hard answers. Can they really live forever? What happens if they eat other donut cats? Who knows.

Sweet Slice-of-Apocalyptic-Life 

Under the unthreatening frosted and chocolate-dipped exterior is a perfectly blended appreciation for black comedy. Donyatsu is a love-letter to the special kind of dark, but not too dark humor that comes from when you mix idiosyncratic characters with a surreal take on the typical post-apocalyptic setting. This isn’t a story about surviving the end times—it’s about passing the time and making the most out of what should be scary because you're bored, hungry, and stuck in a room with someone narrating an entire shonen manga back-to-front with sound-effects.

It’s no secret that post-apocalyptic stories have been a solid trend in anime and manga for decades. However, there’s now been a recent trend of shows catering toward unlikely fans of the slice-of-life genre. Shows such as Sound of the Sky, Humanity Has Declined—and even Kemono Friends—have all played with the concept of slow, easy-going life amidst the end of the world. In some cases, the fall of humanity is more obvious, especially when your characters are, well, actually human and not adorable sentient food-animals. This "cutesy apocalypse" is an unexpected offshoot of what is universally recognized as a depressing and tense genre full of peril and high-stakes stories. They’re optimistic at the end of the day, and so is Donyatsu. 

The over-exaggerated pastels and puns of a surreal setting after the end is appealing, if not a good set-up for an ironic punchline. Donyatsu doesn’t use its post-apocalyptic setting as a “gotcha” or shocking twist, but rather embraces it as its entire backbone to ask whether or not people would still get in arguments about fighting game tactics and snacks (the answer: yes). As short and sweet as it is, Donyatsu is an unexpected source of comfort, and a reassurance that weirdness always wins out in the end. If you want a fun escape with tons of cute animals doing sometimes not-so-cute-and-pleasant things, it’s undeniably worth your time.

  Have you explored the post-apocalyptic landscape of Donyatsu? Let us know your favorite light-hearted shows with dark backstories in the comments—you might be surprised how many there are! 

    ------

Blake P. is a writer who loves his cat. He likes old mecha anime, computer games, books, and black coffee. His twitter is @_dispossessed. His bylines include Fanbyte, VRV, Unwinnable, and more.

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