#THIS EPISODE RUINED EVERYTHING THIS ARC AND ESPECIALLY THE PAST FEW CHAPTERS HAD SET UP

[arahabakix]

the only saving grace of the new episode was the old man yaoi i am sorry but i have never been this disappointed by a bsd episode in my time as a fan like genuinely wtf am i supposed to feel about this?

[misplacedgamer]

Tsuyu Can (Not) Be Trusted: A UA Traitor Theory

So when BnHA 320 dropped a couple days ago, @redblossxmm wrote a very interesting meta post that immediately grabbed my attention. In it, she goes over the chapter cover and the possible symbolism that might be at play. At first when I read it I was like "oh, that's kind of funny, wouldn't it be wild if Tsu was the UA traitor all along". But then I got to talking it over with @rikusoma on Discord and...yeah guys, Tsu might actually be the traitor.

I would just like to say before we get started that all of this is conjecture and based on a lot of admittedly circumstantial evidence. There has not been a lot of heavy handed evidence one way or the other on who the traitor even is (and if we’re being 100% honest, my primary traitor suspect isn’t even a student), but there’s still some fun stuff we can look at that could at least be considered setup against Tsu if that trigger gets pulled.

First off, I want to talk about how weirdly...in focus Tsu has been, especially in the early arcs. So far Horikoshi has only written two bonus chapters for MHA: a 5 page omake included in the character guide that highlights Bakugo's feelings after the 1st semester final exams, and a chapter completely about Tsuyu, her family, and the only friend she had growing up in middle school. Unlike the other bonus chapter though, this one was actually included in Shonen Jump with one of the chapters, and it later reappears in Volume 10.

What’s weird about this is that we ONLY see her family in this little bonus chapter. We actually do get to see a lot of the other families of class 1-A, but we DON’T see Tsu’s family. Horikoshi could have given us Tsu’s backstory and family organically in the story (or in a one page omake, he’s done a few of those, mostly notably in the chapter right before DvK2), but no, she gets a whole short chapter all to herself.

Tsu also gets a whole anime episode to herself (the first filler episode as well) in the vs Stain arc in season 2. What’s weird is that the episode opens with checking in on the other students and seeing how their internships are going, so that momentum could have been continued if they needed to fill time, but instead the entire back half is all Tsu. This should have some payoff later on, or it will have just been wasted narrative space (although since its filler, it could be argued that its empty space being wasted anyway, so it’s not as big a deal).

Now let’s get into some specific things I noticed that we can chalk up to “there are no coincidences”. First, Tsu getting dumped into the water during the USJ attack. Deku attributes this up to the LoV not knowing their power sets, but honestly Tsu is the only one who comes out on top here, compared to the other kids. Deku himself is stuck on a boat, so there’s not a lot of room for him to get going and fight, Bakugo gets blown into the ruins so there’s not a lot of room for him to do things without accidentally blowing himself up, Ojiro is surrounded by fire so he’s also going to have maneuverability issues, Tokoyami’s in the dark so Dark Shadow can’t be used effectively, etc. The low level thugs probably did not know the students' quirks because of how they reacted to Mineta’s goo balls, but if the traitor is a student and told the LoV about the class, then Kurogiri would definitely know. This would be a good opportunity to convince the rest of the class that Tsu was on their side, especially if she was able to be in her element and work as a team player.

Tsu also spends this arc adamantly trying to convince her classmates to call her “Tsu” instead of Asui, a cutesy diminutive of her full first name (like Deku using “Kacchan” for Bakugo, a shortening of Katsuki-chan). It’s interesting that she’s trying to get the boys to call her this too. While it’s fairly common for high school girls to give each other cute names, asking male classmates to also do it is honestly a little bit weird. She also calls everyone “-chan” throughout the story, which is interesting considering she’s once again lumping in the boys and the girls. You could interpret this as her trying to force a connection with the class, trying to be cute to create an air of friendship and intimacy quickly, along with getting them to drop their guard.

Next, let’s look at the Bakugo kidnapping arc. Tsu is not the only person who thinks it's a bad idea to go, but she is the one that most vehemently opposes it, comparing the mission to acting like a villain because you’re working outside of the rules. This is an extremely harsh thing to say, especially to Deku, who just broke both of his arms saving Kota and STILL pushed himself to try and rescue Bakugo and Tokoyami from Mr Compress. Seems to me like she’s very desperate to keep Deku and the rest home, enough to go for the freaking jugular like that. I could also bring up Tsuyu keeping Bakugo away from Deku in chapter 303 (because I’m convinced that if Bakugo had been able to talk to Deku he wouldn’t have run away), but the whole class was on board for that so whatever.

And now let’s get to the big one: Tsu has had two different near misses with the LoV so far. Shigaraki almost grabbed her face during the USJ attack, but it took just long enough that Aizawa was able to save her. Later on, during the Camp Training arc, Toga has her pinned to a freaking tree, but she talks JUST ENOUGH for Ochako to get the drop on her. As a counterpoint, Toga does NOT hesitate at all while trying to go for Ochako’s blood, immediately sticking her and grabbing some before making her retreat. Both times Tsu was put in enough plausible danger to make it seem like she was being threatened, but she wasn’t actually harmed in a significant way.

There are a couple other things we could point to (like how she’s on the cover for chapter 320, along with how weird it is that the chapter just randomly ends on her face, when a more dramatic ending would have probably been when Todoroki encased Deku in the wall of ice), but I think we’ve covered most of everything. To summarize: Tsuyu gets a lot of narrative space given to her despite not really being a relevant character. She is often getting put into danger without actually getting hurt, and Horikoshi has put a lot of effort into making her seem like a gungho team player that will do anything for her friends. Having Tsu be the traitor would make a lot of seemingly unconnected things make a lot more sense, and I think it would be a really good gut punch to have that rug pulled out from under us by her.

Now of course, we have the shakiest part of this theory: what would be Tsu’s motive? Well what little we know about her family is that her parents are often working and therefore she’s responsible for taking care of her younger siblings. It’s possible that she somehow got into some kind of vigilante/mercenary work in the underground in order to support her family. That would go a long way in explaining why she’s always so level headed under pressure (a lot like Bakugo, who also has a lot of experience in fighting, since he used to both bully and get bullied). Alternatively, AFO or the LoV has her family somehow, and she’s being coerced into it. Either way, I definitely think her family would be her motive here.

So in short, Tsuyu is 100% the traitor and clearly this is undeniable. Thank you to Blossxm for making my brain start turning, and thank you Riku for being my springboard the past couple days while I rambled about this ridiculous idea. More meta/theories are incoming, so if you enjoyed my shit post, please stick around and ramble with me about how crazy the last few chapters have been!

[dailyarturia]

Instead of just rating servants, what about a rating of the different Fate storylines?

oh now THIS I can do

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN. often called the most boring route which, I guess yeah because it’s the first route of the first game so it ends up being exposition central. it has its moments and it’s not bad per se but it hasn’t aged that well and the rest of the series has caught up with it since it’s not the entry point for new fans anymore so like half the route’s content and plot twists end up being stuff that is already known from other installments. I still think it’d be nice if ufotable made an ova or something just to complete the set, and also because heaven’s feel actually mirrors fate route on a lot of points so I feel the hf movies aren’t going to be at their best if you haven’t gone over fate route beforehand. if you skip over the outdated exposition you can easily fit all of it in ~10 episodes cause it’s pretty short. 6.5/10 if looked at on its own, but its importance as the base on which later routes build can’t be underestimated 

my personal favourite route even tho its heroine is the worst part of it. with fate route getting the exposition out of the way ubw can go at a faster pace and is more action oriented. the shirou-archer and related archer-lancer conflict is one of my favourites in all of fate and “here I come, king of heroes- do you have enough weapons in stock?” is ICONIC. rin got massively gimped as heroine cause nasu didn’t seem to dare actually letting her be flawed and shirou ended up too focused on his own conflict to form like a real bond with her but that’s a horse I beat to death long ago. the examination of what makes a hero is in general one of my fav themes in fate and ubw obviously delivers there but what I especially love in ubw is the theme of “don’t ‘welcome to the real world’ me asshole, the real world shouldn’t be like this”. 9/10 would be a 10 if rin had like, any character development

this one is... so stressful to read, which is GOOD cause that’s the point but that also means my reread is going at a pace of 3 scenes per 4 months. heaven’s feel throws every convention that fate and ubw set up out the goddamn window by immediately killing off like half the cast including powerhouses like gilgamesh and turning an ideological conflict into a really viscerally personal one. the final conflict isn’t a hero versus a world ending calamity, it’s a bunch of traumatised kids with bad blood between them and the rest of the world caught in the crossfire. “the embodiment of all the world’s evils was a victim” is a really powerful statement to make and where fate and ubw only really asked “what makes a hero” hf hammers in the corresponding question of “what makes a villain”. 8.5/10 it’s an incredibly strong thematic ending to the game as a whole but it’s just, not my favourite

jesus christ look what you did, you got me started. here’s a readmore to save your dashboard and rip mobile users cause I got some opinions on fate alright

this one fucking sucks if you look at it on its own it only works if you know fsn follows it otherwise its just DEATH DESPAIR PAIN SUFFERING yeah yeah we get it urobuchi. apparently he was going through a real bad depressive episode when he was asked to write zero and it was really cathartic to him to be able to write it as dark as he wants knowing that he can’t possibly ruin the happy ending of fsn so, I’ll give him that I guess. I thought it was the greatest shit when I first watched it cause uro’s really good at leveraging shock value but the flaws become more obvious with every rewatch. not really my favourite it’s mostly just asshole central and people who stan zero are usually insufferable but it’s got some good shit among the usual uro stuff. 7/10 PROVIDED you look at it in the context of fsn otherwise it’s like, a 5

BIG favourite and origin of my wife for life bazett fraga mcremitz. I read this one at the exact right time in my life to be absolutely destroyed by it. the whole game is based on the premise of ‘a second chance’ so it goes out if its way to go into the characters who got kinda shafted in fsn while also being the canon ‘everyone lives’ au. fsn has always underlined how valuable an ordinary life is that’s why we call it family dinner simulator 2004 but fha really hammers that one in. less outright action than fsn but a really strong and tense atmosphere. 9/10 would be a 10 if it weren’t for the fucking caren scene

basically revisits the themes from zero and stay night from a different angle but the cast is too large to really go into it so its clunky and a lot of characters end up sidelined. still it’s home to a lot of my favs and some of the coolest action in the whole series. I have a lot of apocrypha opinions but most of them boil down to who i want to hold hands with each other and how much I love sieg(fried) so I’ll spare you those. 7/10 thanks to shaky execution but if you take a shovel and make it that deep yourself it easily jumps up to 8 or even 9. don’t watch the anime I’m begging you.

the storyline actually suffers a lot from how linear and rigid the game structure is so its main selling point is hakuno and their bond with each of the 3 playable servants but by god does it deliver there. hakuno is one of my favourite protagonists of all time and it’s all in how they’re not going to take this shit lying down. it’s a game about forging bonds in a system designed to drive people apart and holding stubborn hope for the future. 9.5/10 the half point is as much acknowledgement of the game’s flaws as I am willing to give because we have decided to stan forever

lol what was that about linear structure? its like, super horny on main so it’s a hard sell but it basically turns everything I liked about extra up to 14. fate/extra CCC is a game about reaching out to others, how people are stronger together, how the future can be changed for the better as long as you are alive to see it, forming your own identity in the wake of trauma and learning who you are in relation to others as well as to your own past, healthy love and unhealthy love and recognising the difference between the two, and big fat anime titties. 10/10 i am not fucking kidding you if you can handle the horny CCC will be the best ride of your goddamn life.

look. i don’t want to get started on extella so just take the ratings. 8/10 concept 4/10 execution.

it’s incomprehensible garbage but it’s MY incomprehensible garbage 9/10 and 3/10 simultaneously

now we got some real mixed feelings on this bad boy here so I’ll try to keep it short. basically all the chapters up to and including london were mediocre at best with septem as the absolute peak of garbage. they actually said in interviews that they didn’t make a shift towards heavier story content until between london and america so that makes sense but it painfully shows. america camelot babylon salomon then exponentially increased in quality and were the fucking bomb. epic of remnant was a massively mixed bag thanks to all the guest writers with minimal supervision to buy nasu time to write lostbelt. lostbelt is fun again. the main story nowadays is really good quality because nasu is just doing what he does best and writing incomprehensible lore with a story around it but because of the game’s nature as mobile game that wants to make everyone appealing somehow it misses a lot of the visceral emotion that fsn had. events are often too silly even if they do end on a serious note and there’s not enough actual serious story content to balance it out so everyone kinda suffers from character erosion and I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to fix that, cause sure you can say ‘make nasu supervise it more’ but nasu’s always writing like 5 different things at once and he can’t really Do That. I think ultimately fgo has been good for fate as a whole in the story department and I also think a different direction/feel from earlier stuff isn’t bad in itself but the scale at which fgo works does seem like it’s beyond what nasu and co really expected to ever have to handle and so while the amount of successes has increased, the amount of failures has also become more glaring. 5/10 on the first few chapters, 8/10 on the later half of arc one and onwards, ???/10 overall, oh fate how I wish I could quit you (i don’t wish that i’m having a good time)

no

[truthbeetoldmedia]

The Bold Type 2x04 "OMG" Review

To be perfectly honest, this week’s episode of The Bold Type was a chore to review. This was definitely a filler episode, setting up our characters for future conflicts as well as resolutions, but the main plot points didn’t resonate as impactful or even important, even though I’m sure they were intended to be. Sutton’s conflict about her new work connection and the Kadena declaration of love were the only exceptions.

In this episode, we see Jane go on a few official dates with Dr. Ben. Unfortunately, this storyline seemed forced and resolved too soon. It also doesn’t help that Dr. Ben is the most boring character I’ve seen recently on television — during one of their dates (playing Scrabble, guys) he refers to pizza as “za” in a horrible attempt at a joke. Is he Jane’s date or her 55-year-old step dad? Unfortunately, instead of that moment coming across as cute, it was just cringy.

We also learn this episode that Dr. Ben is pretty religious, praying before him and Jane’s lunch without a preface. Jane is caught off guard, and that’s pretty understandable. The only people I know that pray before they eat are my grandparents, and they both work in a literal church. We also discover (along with Jane) that he has a tattoo of a cross on his forearm.

By the way, a quick Google search confirmed that doctors aren’t allowed to have visible tattoos, but I’ll forgive this one as an obvious plot device.

Jane is not only caught off guard, she’s put off by Ben’s obvious religiousness. While discussing this with Kat and Sutton they bring up a good point: why does religion have to change their relationship? Kat is dating Adena, who is Muslim, and Jane herself used to have a Jewish boyfriend. Why is she fussing about religion now?

I’m actually on Jane’s side here — being religious and spiritual are two different things. Religion can be really offputting for certain people, millennials especially. The percentage of Americans who declare no religious affiliation outnumbers those who identify as Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist combined, with their numbers comparable to those who identify as Catholic. I wouldn’t mind a potential partner being spiritual, but being so religious that they pray before a meal? That seems like a large chasm to cross.

We learn later on that Jane’s distancing from religion came from her childhood, when her mother was diagnosed with cancer and died shortly after. She was told to pray for her mother, and when that obviously didn’t work, those around her tried to comfort her by saying that it was alright and that her mother was with God. I have to ask — how is this comforting? To a child, especially? Jane is supposed to find comfort that her mother is no longer with her? This caused her to become disillusioned with the church and with God.  

Back to Sutton and Kat’s point — Ben’s religion is too close for comfort. Her Christianity growing up didn’t look like Judaism or Islam, so she can separate her feelings easier. With Ben, the similarities are too close to home. He’s praying to the same God that let her down, and that makes her incredibly uncomfortable.

Jane ends up apologizing to Ben, explaining her childhood, and Ben in turn explains how he manages to be religious and function as a doctor in a scientific world. Basically, Ben admits that God is a comfort to him, especially after all he’s seen as a doctor. Despite this deeply personal monologue, Ben is still such a flat character that to be honest, it’s difficult for me to even care about Jane’s character arc this episode. I’m sure this religion storyline was meant to add some depth to him, but I’m not feeling it.

Dr. Ben is such a cliche — he’s a doctor with a big heart who works too many hours at a hospital that doesn’t pay well, all to serve the community. He fills out paperwork for his patients when they find it too complicated or time consuming. He has a quick and slick answer for everything Jane asks, and any time he talks about his job he descends into a heartfelt speech about “doing the right thing.” He dances with a women who is about to give birth as a quirky way to get the labor going — honestly, he reads like a fanfiction character that dies tragically in the third chapter to teach the main characters some kind of moral lesson.

We also see Jane meet up with Ryan (fondly known as “Pinstripe”), her former….lover? Friend? Co-worker? This looks like the beginning of a love triangle, according to Sutton. Pinstripe’s smooth, playboy persona is definitely the polar opposite of Dr. Ben’s way too strong moral compass. After briefly helping Pinstripe get some good gossip stories for his job at Page Six, Jane decides that she doesn’t want to be the type of journalist that benefits from ruining other people’s lives and exposing scandal.

Now, this can’t be the last we see of Pinstripe, and I HOPE this is close to the last we’ll see of Ben. For once though, something refreshing is happening on the internet (don’t @ me) — instead of the “Team Ben” vs. “Team Pinstripe” war that I was sure would take over The Bold Type fandom, we have a third and better option: Team Jane. This option emerged pretty quickly, suggesting that no one is really feeling either of these men as possibilities for Jane. While Pinstripe is infinitely more interesting than Dr. Boring, it would be great to see Jane explore her career as a badass journalist. Interesting doesn’t equal the best choice, ladies. And neither does boring.

Let’s move on to Sutton — again, the only part of the episode that didn’t seem flat. We know by now that Sutton is the true definition of a go-getter, but we do see some of her insecurity peek through this week. While introducing herself and Kat to an influencer named Brooke, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Sutton isn’t as far along in her career as she would like to be. Both Sutton and Kat have been at Scarlet for the same amount of time — four years — and while Sutton JUST made the promotion to fashion assistant, Kat has been the head of her own department for a while now.

She also finds herself comparing her success to Brooke, who also works with the fashion world. How did she find so much success while Sutton works so hard and seems to be going so slowly? Kat responds with “You work hard, you hustle,” but Sutton does all that. It turns out that Brooke’s mother is a buyer for the high end store Barneys; apparently connections are also a huge part of success.

Having connections and access is a huge hurdle when trying to break into an industry, and more often than not this part of success is left out of the “American dream” narrative all millennials have had forced on them. We all know that hard work is important, but not a guarantee that you’ll make it as many people treat it. There’s a tendency for older generations, or people with obvious privilege, to assume that those who aren’t successful or who don’t make a lot of money simply haven’t worked hard enough. I wish that this was the modern topic of the episode, not the religion storyline that fell flat and probably didn’t resonate with many people.

In an attempt to make some of these allusive connections, Sutton goes out several times with Brooke and her well connected friends, which leads to them putting a $500 “miscellaneous” charge on her Scarlet corporate card. When confronted, Brooke casually admits that she added some “party favors,” aka cocaine, to the bill. After some panic, Sutton accepts the charge, willing to take a few risks to help her career along. By staying close with Brooke, she has access to everyone that Brooke has access to. Sutton is no stranger to making sacrifices for her job, but it’s a little hard to believe that an entry that amounts to over $800 would be easily accepted as just “client drinks.” I’m guessing that this is going to be a pressure point for Sutton going forward for at least the next few episodes, if not the rest of the season.

Now for Kat and Adena. While better composed than Jane and Ben’s story this episode, Kat and Adena’s brief conflict also fell flat for me. The whole thing was a bit clumsy — Adena gets an invite to a friend’s party at a local lesbian bar. She doesn’t want to go, but Kat insists on meeting the people in her life. Once at the bar, Kat realizes that they’re basically surrounded by Adena’s ex-girlfriends. This makes her a little self-conscious. To make matters worse, when she asks Adena how many sexual partners she’s had, Adena avoids an actual answer and instead says, “the past is the past.”

That’s the sound of a red flag, everyone. While there is most likely no reason for Kat to worry, Adena’s dismissal and refusal to answer the question leaves Kat more worried than before. Is Adena hiding something? Sutton makes things worse when Kat confides in her and Jane about this. Apparently Sutton asked the same question, and received the same answer, from her college boyfriend who happened to be cheating on her. Now, I’m sure Adena isn’t cheating, but it is odd to me that she refused to answer the question. If the past truly has no bearing on the present, then what harm is there in sharing with Kat?

At this point, Kat is a bit of a mess. She’s spiraling, and jealousy isn’t a good look on her. She overanalyzes every woman that Adena seems to recognize, remembering that she and Adena started to become close when Adena was still dating her former girlfriend.

Eventually Adena does open up to Kat, but the conflict seems unnecessary. When Kat opens up about her worry that Adena could easily move on from her, Adena assures her that this isn’t the case. She’s risking a lot to be with Kat: she’s trying to find work in a country that doesn’t want her, she’s missing being home for her mother’s birthday to be in that same country; she wouldn’t be making these sacrifices if she wasn’t truly in love with Kat.

I will concede that this was a great moment for Kat and Adena, and Adena’s explanation of what she’s going through to be with Kat was very well-written. But the conflict could have been easily avoided, and for a couple that have been so open with each other in the past, it seemed slightly out of character.

All in all, this episode was a miss for me. Two out of three of this episode’s storylines were weaker than usual for The Bold Type, so let’s hope they bring the usual fire back next week. Without Dr. Ben.

The Bold Type airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Freeform.

Alyssa's episode rating: 🐝🐝