#This is one of the few character arcs in the series with proper setup and payoff like. Pls

[bonefall]

Heyyyy since there's talk of the Breezepelt Attacking Poppyfrost scene going around, I just wanna remind people that he explicitly does that because he was groomed by the Dark Forest. Jayfeather points it out on the page that Breezepelt's stated motivation doesn't make sense, because it's not actually a rational idea Breezy-P came up with. It's then shown that actual factual evil demons are exploiting the anger he has from being a victim of child abuse, to indoctrinate and manipulate him into radical violence

I wrote a little essay about this with citations and stuff. It wasn't "for no reason," and anyone who tries to use the scene as "evidence" of Breezepelt being Secretly Evil to justify the abuse he underwent as a kid either didn't read it, has bad reading comprehension skills, or is cherrypicking on purpose.

Crowfeather emotionally and physically abused his child, Breezepelt was socially alienated by WindClan as a result, which leads to this moment. That is what is on the page.

[pochapal]

Hello hi this is not a question but I would just like to say that I have become hopelessly infatuated with the omelette and pickle routes. The way you weave meta narratives actually made me understand a bit of what was going on in the epilogues and beyond cannon. Also 6 vi of pickle is amazing and the way you narrate the flashes of the battle remind me of the illumine series and Aiden’s narration if you’re familiar. The conversations at the end of omelette with June and the author and in pickle between tav and Jake are so cathartic. I could say more but I feel I’ve polished your bone bulge enough so I’ll just end my ramblings and say that I hope you get better from your body having an Extremely Normal One and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

aaaah this is very kind!!! it makes me really happy that omelette route and its associates landed so well with you!! <3

i've never heard of illumine before but i can speak a little on the process of SIX! the battle sections are very specifically stylistically modeled in pace, tone, and vibe, to mimic the experience of reading a [S] page. frantic jumps between action moving at a lightning pace bouncing all over the show in sharp contrast to the lengthier more meditative parts of pickle route. specifically idk what exactly to call it but each scene in those parts are very much built with a kind of enjambment to it, where each scene ends with a "setup" and the following one answers it in a "punchline" in a surprising way.

an example off the top of my head is the part where a desperate harry ends his scene begging "please let all this end" and then the following section immediately begins with "the skirmish ends quickly after that" except the skirmish in question is not harry's, and also things Very Much do not end. there's tons of that in these rapidfire scenes which i think Works because it bakes a bunch of symmetry into the story in a way that compliments hs proper's tendency to be rife with clever and stupid callbacks to itself remixed over and over both as jokes and in full seriousness. it's actually something i started doing with the novel i'm writing for my phd since it's an incredibly useful tool for telling a fast paced horror story with a load of interweaving characters, and omelette route is nothing if not a testing ground for a bunch of stylistic experiments.

the catharsis stuff is i think more obvious in what i'm doing lmao. that said the june/author stuff in omelette route was entirely emergent throughout the storytelling and not actually a thing planned out until it became inevitable (omelette route itself addresses my rational here in a bunch of ways both truthful and narratively exciting lol). gonna toot my own horn for a second and say there's been a few times people have read scenes in these stories and said they've affected them, but for me a lot of the intense emotional strength catharsis stuff that slams my readers in the feelings doesn't really affect me like that! so with omelette route i really did challenge myself as a writer to make something that would actually move me personally. and it worked! i also think that it was categorically absolutely insane that i Did That with omelette route given actually what it is, but i'm also glad that i transformed what would otherwise be a mundane moment of identity questioning into this elevated performance? i think especially because, like, my own gender situation resolved itself in a kind of less interesting way lol so i'm glad that that moment is preserved like that! it's something i literally could categorically never replicate because you can't *un*pass that threshold.

meanwhile tav is like my absolute fave surprise standout character from pickle route and i make no secret of it. at the start of pickle route i was dead set on this being Vrissy's Moment and so much of the story up to TWO was steering in that direction. tav's original arc would have seen him kind of being ironically the kid who gets Least Traumatized by the events of pickle route, mostly based on early now abandoned plans for the upcoming sburb session arc, but then THREE happened. and then the gamzee thing hit me like divine inspiration and i realized there was this whole genuinely amazing path for tav laid out right there and i would have been an idiot not to take it on. and!!! would you believe it that this kid keeps surprising me even now? literally right when i sat down to start 7-3 the plan was that tav would tentatively reconcile with jake and they'd decide for him to take on the surname "english" together as a nice moment, but then it was like tav himself took me down the path it went in real time, and it was the right thing to do! because his emancipation progression is so good start to finish. he just keeps throwing curveballs in the story and blowing up intended plans and every single time it just Works. i love that kid. i am so excited to see what he does in act 3.

for the rest of pickle route, we've got the second half of SEVEN to get through which contains some of my absolute favorite scenes i've had planned since 2020 (including the omelette route parallel everybody has been waiting for). after that is (seven) which forms the 3x climax combob to kanira's sc's and cara's stories in a way that will definitely not make everybody scream.

and then chapter 8. :)

there are two final chapters to come after that which i can't speak on in any way, other to say that they very nicely tie back into omelette route again and create a perfect setup for act 3. it is my dearest hope that 2025 is the year pickle route Finally Ends, but we'll see how it goes!

ty for giving me the opportunity to ramble about my work i love my story and i love never shutting up <3

[mitsukisnekson]

The more I think about it, the more I think that it would be a weird narrative move if Inojin really did die.

For one, Team 10 have not had their confrontation with Matsuri, which I think is definitely is set up to happen, especially since Matsuri's memories are of Konohamaru and Team 10. It wouldn't be a real Team 10 confrontation if Inojin isn't there. Besides they all promised to help their team leader.

Secondly, Inojin's death would straight up kill this generation's InoShikaCho, which would be absolutely wild. This would be an insane development, because after seventeen generations, the streak would end. We would have to hope that there will be a new trio for the next generation, and it likely won't be from Ino, Shikamaru, or Choji's bloodline. Narratively, there is little to no setup for the end of InoShikaCho. I feel like if this event has to happen, would be something that would get its own arc and a lot of buildup.

And finally, it feels like... we haven't really gotten much of Inojin yet? Of the main two teams of the series: New Team 7 and Team 10, Inojin is the only one who hasn't had a proper arc, both in the manga anime. He has a few episodes dedicated to him, but there are like... three in total? Maybe even less? Both Shikadai and Chocho have had arcs and episodes dedicated to them, how is it that we have not had an Inojin centered arc yet? We've barely gotten to really see him shine, his death would feel cheap because its literally for shock value and for Hima's character development.

On that note, I'm hoping that the anime (not the manga because the manga colloquially has no room for any characters development not tied with the main plot) will finally give us that Inojin arc. Also we haven't really had a proper Team 10 arc either and that can't happen without Inojin.

I could be on some hard copium right now because I'm having trouble tangoing with the idea that the kids I grew to love in Next Generations are dying, but I feel like its such a shame if Inojin really did die.

There's just so much narrative potential that would be lost if he died.

[greatwyrmgold]

Medalist Adaptation Analysis: Space and Time

I've posted a lot about the Medalist anime in the past week. A couple of times, I've mentioned adaptational changes that I'm dimly aware of, either from reading TV Tropes or from manga readers directly telling me about things that were different in the manga.

I kinda wanted to do a proper side-by-side comparison to understand these changes—to understand what was changed, and how, and maybe even why. Then @hikineetsu said "I would be interested in reading your adaptation analysis!!!" and I decided to buckle down and do it.

...I don't actually do any of that in this specific post, though. Something I intended to be a quick aside before diving into chapter 1 grew a lot longer than I intended. So please bear with me as I discuss...

Chapter Length in Manga

Before I get into details, I'd like to point out one major difference between Medalist and most manga that get adapted into anime.

Manga series in Weekly Shonen Jump (the magazine where most anime non-weebs know about started) generally start with a chapter around 45-50 pages, so that they can squeeze in as much worldbuilding and character development and plot setup as possible while still building up to some cool moment that hooks the reader. After that, chapters are usually around 18-20 pages on average, with some chapters dipping into the 15-25 range.

A lot of manga not published in the physical Jump magazine also follow this standard, to varying degrees. It's not just a matter of space in the magazine; a mangaka can only write and draw so many pages of manga each week! And weekly manga set reader expectations, while also establishing best-practices for the adaptation process (since most of the big successful anime are based on weekly series).

But Medalist is not a weekly series; it's published in Monthly Afternoon, one chapter a month. The three chapters in Medalist's first tankoban are all around 70 pages, more than triple the Shonen Jump average and about half again as long as the standard opening chapter.

Later chapters vary wildly in length, but the shortest are still at the upper end of weekly manga chapter lengths, and the longest approach the 70-page mark. Volumes of Medalist average around four chapters (sometimes with a "short program" thrown in), compared to the 8-12 most manga get.

Manga Space and Anime Time

You can't make a 1:1 comparison between manga page count and minutes of anime. The anime adaptation of a two-page splash of a single punch will probably occupy less time than the average page of expository dialogue. And the adaptation's directors have a lot of influence; some kinds of scenes can be stretched or compressed easily.

However, there's still a clear correlation between the page count of a scene/chapter/arc and the amount of screentime it will take to adapt it properly. And at a glance, Medalist's pages are denser than most manga! (Or at least weekly manga.) You have a few pages with one or two big panels, but mostly...

So yeah. Medalist has more "beats" in its first chapter than Jump manga do. But you can't really split chapter 1 into two chapters; the midway point is right about when Inori and her mom come in to chat with Hitori (and Tsukasa is also there).

The unexpected reunion of Tsukasa and that kid who tried sneaking into the rink would be an okay moment to end an episode on, but most of the beats that get you invested in Tsukasa and that kid come in the second half of the chapter.

You cannot fit this chapter into a standard anime episode, or even split it across two standard anime episodes. But what about nonstandard episodes?

I Swear This Oshi no Ko Tangent Is Relevant!

The first time I read OnK, I was using the MANGA Plus app, which let you read the first seven chapters of OnK freely and put restrictions on reading after that. I read the first seven chapters, but I wasn't impressed (and hadn't heard anything beforehand except "it was written by the Kaguya-sama guy"), so I dropped it...one chapter before the hook.

Few people would watch the second episode of Oshi no Ko if the first didn't get to the series's big hook—but that hook is buried at the end of the first tankoban. You can't just cut 80-90% of that volume, because it's full of essential character development for the core cast. And you can't put that character development after the hook, because the hook fundamentally changed those characters and what they could do.

So the OnK adaptation team came up with one of the best individual adaptational decisions in the history of anime: They made a feature-length episode 1, covering the entire first volume in one go, but making that "go" long enough that they didn't have to cut much, if at all.

And it worked! There was a little jank from turning several episodic chapters into one episode, but it solved the big problem. Anyone who thought about dropping the OnK anime after Ruby's preschool dance subplot would know that they're doing so in the middle of episode 1, that there's a reason the first episode keeps going, something that it wanted to reach. This single decision elevated the Oshi no Ko anime from a probable cult classic to a global sensation.

Medalist is in a much less dramatic state; a double-length first episode would be enough. I would be shocked if no one floated the idea back in the anime's preproduction; it's the obvious solution to this problem.

But Medalist is not Oshi no Ko.

OnK's writer, Aka Akasaka, had already written three manga, including the insanely popular Kaguya-sama: Love Is War. The artist, Mengo Yokoyari, was less prominent, but she's still worked on seven different series and two one-shots, two of which have Wikipedia pages, as does Mengo herself. Medalist's writer/illustrator, Tsurumaikada, does not; as far as I can tell, their only work before Medalist is a self-published single-volume manga called Megami ni nante Narenai.

Beyond that name recognition, OnK was already wildly popular. According to Wikipedia, the Honya Club website ranked Medalist as its 15th-most-recommended comic of 2021; that same year, Oshi no Ko was ranked #4. Medalist got sixteenth place in the 2021 Next Manga Awards; Oshi no Ko won. Even before the anime took off, OnK was widely beloved by people who read manga.

Sentai Filmworks and the rest of the Oshi no Ko production committee knew they could have the next big hit on their hands, and were willing to move mountains so the anime could properly present Akasaka's story. Studio ENGI did a good job with Medalist, but they didn't have the clout or confidence to break the mold.

And besides, their problem was much smaller than OnK's; less would have to be cut, and what's cut was probably less important. You can fit all the essential beats from Medalist chapter 1 into a single standard anime episode, and still have space left over for some of the nonessential ones.

Going outside the box is risky, and the committee decided Medalist wasn't worth that risk.

Conclusion

Medalist's unusually bulky and dense chapters pose an adaptational problem to an industry used to thinner weekly chapters. Anime production companies are used to shuffling chapters around to turn 1½-2 chapters into a single 22-minute episode. Medalist chapters pose the opposite problem, and while creative solutions are available for that problem, they were not used.

This necessitated some severe cuts in early episodes, and probably at least some of the later ones. I'll therefore try to be lenient about scenes and beats that got cut for runtime...unless they cut something obviously important, of course. And things that were changed without meaningful screentime reduction will not receive that amnesty.

[Primacy Bias>]

[glassvines]

Thoughts On 2023 Favorites

TV Shows 1. Good Omens season 2: Oops, I'm obsessed again. You can make the argument that a second (and PHEW eventual third) season was unnecessary, but I disagree. It was nice to get a season that wasn't so breakneck in it's pacing. Everything slowed down a bit and focused in on Aziraphale and Crowley's shenanigans. Which, let's be honest, is what the audience wants. That being said, I liked everything else about it too. A cute/silly plot, fun new characters, and a devastatingly sad finale that left me distraught. I could not have asked for more really. (Except more kissing. Please tell me there will be more kissing.) 2. Lockwood and Co: A spooky premise that probably took a lot of effort to appear even semi-believable [as a tv show]. Yet, it was pulled off with flying colors. It was also perfectly atmospheric and charming, so of course netflix canceled it. I plan on reading the books.

Animation (TV & Films) 1. Murder Drones: 2023 was a good year for indie animation overall, and out of all of them Murder Drones was the show to win my entire heart. Perfect setup for horror and YA spoofing, but also well written enough that I enjoyed the character focus and progression as well. I'm psyched for the final two episodes set to release in the spring. 2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: If any movie of recent memory deserved a decent sequel it was this one, so I'm very happy it turned out as great as it did. One of the few comic-book films I bothered with in 2023. 3. Hilda season 3: Easily one of my all-time favorites from Netflix, so I'm beyond happy it has a great ending now. Gorgeous animation, a lovable main and support cast, and perfect chill vibes. Deserves a bluray release. 4. Elemental: Listen. Pixar's still got it this was so cute. You're forgiven for The Good Dinosaur Peter Sohn. 5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: So much fun tho. Love the current creative trend in cg films happening thanks to Into the Spider-verse. Also, the No Diggity scene was incredible. The movie has an A+ soundtrack. Anime (TV & Films) 1. Trigun Stampede: So relieved this turned out to be great, considering the original is a favorite of mine. Not a easy feat in the age awful, cash-grab reboots. 2. The Boy And The Heron: Honestly? My favorite Miyazaki film since Howl's Moving Castle. Genuinely moving and left me misty-eyed. 3. Demon Slayer: Swordsmith Village Arc: This show is so pretty. Still surprised how well the series portrays it’s simple, compelling cast. Like it’s an effortless sort of thing (it’s not). 4. Suzume: Makoto Shinkai's last three movies just make me happy okay. Happy and hopeful. The best comfort movies ever. Video Games I have a steam deck now so you'd think I played a bunch of video games last year but, no. I didn't get heavily into much last year. Played some Hades though? Live Films || Note: I watched so many great classic horror movies this year that I had never given a proper watch. I would like to continue that this year!! 1. Talk to Me: Please make more horror movies Danny and Michael Philippou. This one was wild. 2. Dark City: The fact that The Matrix got four movies and this didn't get any sequels is a fucking tragedy. 3. Coherence: Love me a simple, creepy sci-fi movie with an interesting premise. Apparently, quite a lot of the film is improvised as well? That blew my mind. 4. Greener Grass: More films that just feel like one big Adult Swim skit please. This style of script is hysterical to me. 5. Caveat: This goes on my fave list simply for scaring the shit out of me lmao. Movies walk a fine line, when the intention is to make you uncomfortable for long periods of time. They risk being irritating instead of entertaining. Caveat had me shrieking at my tv (in a delighted sort of way).

Honorable Mentions 1. Lore Olympus 2. Nier Automata anime 3. Asteroid City + Wes Anderson's new short films 4. OPLA

Things I'm Looking Forward to in 2024 1. Dune 2 2. Second season of Severance hopefully! 3. Madoka Magica Movie 4: Walpurgisnacht: Rising?? Is it finally happening or what? 4. New Magnus Archives

Some Creative & General Goals for 2024 I feel like I was drawing a lot more in 2023! Still nothing worth posting online, but I'm making some progress I think (slowly but surely). Goals: make more art for my siblings when they request it, finish some digital art that I started, and finish the diorama piece I planned out. On the general goals I'd like to travel more! Particularly, I'd like to visit some national parks.

[albertonykus]

Doraemon Movie Review: Nobita in the Robot Kingdom (2002)

What is Doraemon? The title character of the Doraemon manga and anime is a blue robotic cat from the 22nd Century who keeps an array of high-tech gadgets in a portable pocket dimension on his belly, and has traveled from the future to improve the fortunes of a hapless schoolboy named Nobita. Although relatively obscure in the English-speaking world, Doraemon is a Mickey-Mouse-level cultural icon in East Asia (and some other regions, too). The Doraemon franchise was a big part of my childhood, and there are still elements of it that I enjoy now.

Doraemon has released theatrical films almost annually since 1980, most of which involve Nobita and his friends (kind Shizuka, brash Gian, and crafty Suneo) getting swept into adventures thanks to Doraemon's gadgets. Despite being of potentially broad appeal to fans of science fiction and animated films, there are very few English reviews of the Doraemon movies, so I'm embarking on a project to write about all the films that have come out so far. Good luck to me…

Movie premise: Nobita and his friends rescue a lost robot boy, who comes from a planet where humans and robots once lived in harmony.

My spoiler-free take: A compelling story that packs some strong emotional punches, but flubs a crucial character arc. I suspect it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, but I’d like to see a remake of this one!

POTENTIAL SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT

Review: It must be something about robots that brings out the emotional stories in Doraemon movies. That probably shouldn’t be a surprise, because one of the most important themes of the franchise is, after all, the friendship between a robot and a human. The dramatic setup here is an interesting one for a Doraemon film, as we learn that the robot boy Poko was the childhood playmate of one of the major antagonists, the tyrannical Queen Jeanne, with both of them having grown up under the care of another robot, Maria. For most part, the movie gets a lot of mileage out of this premise, and the scene near the end where Doraemon and Maria deliver what they fully expect to be their last words to their respective charges is especially heartwrenching.

However, there is one way in which this movie drops the ball considerably on its emotional journey: the queen’s character development happens far too quickly! Barely a montage passes before she has a change of heart. I wondered whether this was also the case in the manga adaptation of this story*, so I had a look.

*Although the original author of the Doraemon manga, Fujiko F. Fujio, passed away in 1996, his company Fujiko Pro continued to produce manga counterparts to the films for a while following his death. My understanding is that the films and their associated manga that were made after Fujio’s passing were developed in parallel from a shared story outline, instead of one being directly adapted from the other.

As it turns out, it takes much more for Jeanne to come around in the manga, including getting smacked in the face by Shizuka!

(Damn.)

I have to say, I really wish this version of the story had been used in the film, not only because it would have improved Jeanne’s character arc, but also because Shizuka doesn’t get very much to do in the movie proper. In fact, many of the newer Doraemon films (remakes aside) don’t seem to know what to do with Shizuka, as has been summarized very well by @creepfactors​. Whereas Nobita, Gian, and even Suneo often get to display more rarely-seen sides of their personalities in the movies, she is mainly just cast as “the nice one”, which is already her default role in the group.

In truth, Shizuka is not such a one-note character in the mainline series. There are times when she can be very direct with her words and quick to anger towards perceived slights. Lashing out in the name of justice for a vulnerable child is absolutely something she would do, yet would be unprecedented in a Doraemon movie!

There are other elements of the manga that I would have liked to see in the movie, too. For example, Poko’s ability to remotely pinpoint Maria’s location seemingly comes out of nowhere close to the end of the film, but in the manga it is mentioned that he was unable to do so earlier in the story because he had a damaged antenna. The manga also indicates that the roboticist Dr. Chapek repaired Doraemon’s Time Machine so that the protagonists could return home at the end of the story, whereas the movie never explains how the Time Machine was fixed.

Given that this is a relatively recent Doraemon film, I’m guessing that it’s not high on the priority list for a remake. However, I think it would benefit a lot from one! Newer Doraemon movies are generally longer than those that came out prior to the 2005 anime reboot, which would give a hypothetical remake of Nobita in the Robot Kingdom more room to include the aforementioned items. Furthermore, the remakes often use material from the manga that was left out of the original films.

Do I have anything else left to note? This movie might contain one of Doraemon’s most impressive feats in the series: charging into the main villain’s lair by himself and taking down the villain unarmed. It’s also funny how ready Nobita is to go on an adventure in this film. The moment that Doraemon determines that they need to travel to another planet, Nobita essentially declares, “Leave that to us!” Quite a contrast to how timid he usually is in the regular stories!

Star rating: ★★★☆☆

[tomatograter]

New to the fandom, Could you explain June? 💯 Love and support her. But homestuck 2 doesn't have her and I'm just confused?

June Egbert precedes the concept of homestuck^2! I’ve seen a lot of people be confused about this because they weren’t active on the fandom at the time the epilogues dropped, when reading her as a trans woman got a lot of discussion going and eventually lead to multiple confirmations.

So here’s an attempt at contextualization:

Throughout Homestuck, a few key ideas about Egbert’s identity and motivation to push forward with her hero’s journey are dropped like breadcrumbs. She’s meant to play the default straight-man protagonist. Her defining traits are ridiculously… generic, when compared to how all the other kids present themselves and stick to exaggerated bits. She’s a perfectly normal, regular suburban kid with normal, suburban issues. 

She may not leave her room a whole lot. She may not have a lot of real life friends in the neighborhood. She holds a comical irritation for the concept of birthdays, even though her father is extremely supportive, and is delighted to see his son grow up nice and healthy. There’s no reason for her to be so irrationally upset at cakes and gifts, and that’s what makes the setup funny! June doesn’t even know why she’s annoyed with half of the things that annoy her, what the heck.

But under all that playing around there is a sense that her life is so normal, so blasé, so unexciting and limiting and hollow and fake that she’d give anything to not be herself, even if only for ten minutes. This goes way, way back. It’s why June needs SBURB to happen.

June lives as though her life hasn’t started yet. She’s stuck in the Tutorial stage. I would argue while most kids (and trolls) play SBURB to escape a shitty environment or the end of the world as they know it, June plays for a simpler reason: She needs to escape herself, and she needs to do it before it is too late. 

Being thirteen means crossing the homeric abyss between being a child with no care for the world sporting a generic hand-me-down identity and becoming a Teen (capital T) who needs to figure out how to cope with atrocious bodily changes while building the adult they’re meant to be AND deciding what the fuck they want out of life, and how they’re going to work to get it, forever and ever.

When you’re trans, and you don’t yet know you’re trans (or that this is a thing you’re even ALLOWED to be) the above feels a lot like serving a life sentence for an intangible crime.

You know what you’re supposed to do. You’ve seen it on tv, you’ve heard it from your dad, you know what are the normal trials and tribulations. You know you'll grow a few pimples and stubble and you'll need to learn how to shave, obviously, because it's basically a tradition in your family, and no one is really happy to be a teen. You know at some point you'll find a nice girl and you'll grow a hat out of your skull and then you will have to pay taxes and maybe you will have a baby daughter? You'd like it to be a daughter for no particular reason. And when you get a daughter you're going to name her Casey and she's going to be adorable and this is something you've dedicated a lot of thought to. Maybe its because you thought Nic Cage looked really cool with those long flowing locks in con air, the movie who featured a trans woman as a minor character for a few minutes (and she gets quite a bit of compliments, regardless of how the movie has aged), and he had a really exciting life, but goddamn did he love his daughter. There is no purer love than the bond between a father and his daughter. 

This absolutely has nothing to do with your father and you, or how you hold no excitement for becoming an adult man, or how your father's excitement for you becoming an adult man in your stead feels a little stifling.

But i digress.

June spends her time on SBURB mostly hassling karkat, and readily following the instructions of zany, dangerous, COOL girls that seem to know what they're doing. June lets Terezi lead her to certain death without blinking. June lets Vriska dress her up as soon as opportunity presents itself. June thinks its really funny to trick this troll Who Types Really Oddly into believing she's Rose, and also into believing that she's a very silly girl. You may even say Homestuck employs a few of jokes pertaining to how her name looks like EGG !

June has a ball playing this game until it starts to get shitty. She's never able to mend her relationship with her dad, as he's one of the first causalities. She has to spend a lot of time waiting around with jade on a ship until things get cool and exciting again, but she never stops growing during those three years. Its fine, though, because there's always more things to be done and more people to fight.

Until there aren't, and they make a new earth, and while everyone cheers and claps for the birth of a new planet June realizes all her excuses are over. Her friends begin to grow up. Rose gets married. Jade is living her best life. Dave has a not-boyfriend glued to his hip. Jane has a job. Jake is on TV for some reason. June doesn't want to leave home. June's birthday is around the corner again. Here come all the congratulations for becoming a strong lad for yet another year! Vriska is gone. Terezi is gone. SBURB is over. Wacky hijinks have been swapped for real-ass, boring-ass Regular life. We watch her unsuccessfully chase after the glory of days gone by when Rose presents her the possibility of going back into the game, when things were cool and mattered, or her flimsy decision to settle down with a nice girl she hasn’t really made an effort to know and become a father and be absolutely miserable for four decades as she asserts nothing is real, not anymore, and this is just how it is.

Depersonalization, depression and general apathy towards the world are all pronounced aspects of dysphoria that seem like unrelated incidents for someone who hasn't came out yet. June's trainwreck of a life post-game, specially her feeling of hollowness and chasing after anything that could fill it struck a chord with trans readers who left the epilogues to read HS again and discovered this has always sort of been here. June being a trans woman who doesn't have the proper vocabulary to express she is a trans woman makes a lot of earlier bits from the comic click into place, now in a broader context. We settled in the name "June" because it's what she imagines Vriska is calling her at some point, amid laughs, but even that was discussed for a lengthy period last year. What would she want to be called, what are possible tags for this, etc. But it was mostly for fun and games, because the prospect of the protagonist of a 10 year old beloved cult series being ACTUALLY confirmed as a trans woman just wasn't something that was done.

Until word got around to Andrew Hussie and he was reportedly so pleased with this interpretation of events he’d be making references to it, and some time later, a box of toblerones was left in a cave as a gift for fans to find. The first person to find a toblerone thought it would be funny to dedicate it to June, because now she was an ongoing reference that was fun to make. Instead of it ending there, Hussie logs on twitter for the first time in a long while to say 'Oh yeah, i'll make it happen' and that's when the whole thing exploded. I have a post detailing this made a year ago (with pictures!) so i won't keep you here.

In the year since, June has been vaguely alluded to in Pesterquest (in jade's end card, she's having her nails painted by rose.) Has been widely adopted by the community, those making their own fanventures and continuations, and the team behind Homestuck^2. In every way that matters, she's already thriving within the community that brought her to light a year ago. But her coming out in canon is something that will take time and a proper narrative arc to happen, one that is still being set up. We know it'll come eventually, the only question is “how”.

Not that the wind waits for anyone.

[quirkwizard]

With the final arc rapidly approaching, I thought it would be fun to share some of my hopes for the story going forward. To preface this, I usually don't like to predict what happens in a story. I find that doing such things often leads to disappointment, setting up expectations that the story may not meet and souring the experience. So consider this more of a wish list or ideas I think would be interesting. In that case, I had a lot of ideas and had to narrow them down. So if you want to hear those or have some of your own ideas, feel free to let me know. And since I’ve already discussed some of my ideas with Tomura and Izuku, I won’t cover them here.

-A return of the Shikuetsu students in some fashion. I always felt these characters were underutilized. They were set up with this whole rivalry with UA and all the characters were fleshed out for their brief spotlight, but nothing was really done with them. And it's been setup that UA and Shiketsu are connected to one another now via the system Nezu made. Maybe there is an attack at UA and they come to defend all of the civilians. Maybe that could take part in the battle. It would be neat to see Inasa and Endeavor interact, possibly with Endeavor acknowledging him or Inasa realizing Enji doesn’t have that hateful glare anymore.

-Spinner leaving. I'm not saying that I want redemption for him, I just think that it'd make sense for him to try and get out of everything in the chaos. Because I still think Spinner is a person way in over his head who does not want to do this. Even when he says he's in too deep, I feel like he doesn't really mean it. It came across more as an excuse rather than a justification. And if at all possible, I would like to have him interact with Stain. Considering how much Spinner has been influenced by and has walked a similar path to Stain, I would be interesting to see how the two see each other and if Spinner would be changed by the experience.

-I would want Dabi to die, but in a specific way. I think it would be a fitting end for him to die by burning himself to death by using his Quirk in a fight against Shoto. He'd be so consumed by his hatred that he'd keep trying to burn his flames brighter and brighter, utterly consumed by his anger against Endeavor and Shoto.That being said, I’m not sure what to do with Endeavor. While I do think that him dying as an act of penance would make sense, preferably defending Shoto, I would be fine with him living as well. Not every redemption arc has to end with the character dying. If anything, it may be more poignant if he lived, forced to forever bear the weight of his actions and trying to atone through his actions.

-Izuku keeps "One For All". One idea I've heard going around is that Izuku will defeat Tomura or All For One by giving up "One For All", causing either one of them to be destroyed from the inside out from the power overload of the two Quirks being in a single body. I do think that could be a neat way to end it, getting rid of two Quirks that were far too powerful for this world and prime symbols of either side. However, I think that Izuku ending the series as a Quirkless would be a bit of a slap in the face. We've seen him grow and develop all the time, just to see him back where he was before. If the story does go in that direction, I'd like him to still have some power. Maybe a he gets a new copy of "One For All", maybe he gets a new power entirely, just something.

-An epilogue taking place in the future. While I do think that the series could end with a few wrap up chapters and an ambiguous promise of things working out, I do think that we need to skip ahead to see where everything ends up. Not only because I'd like to see these characters become real heroes, especially Izuku becoming the proper number one, but just the broader implications of their actions on the hero world. The series keeps playing up that this would be the generation that changes the world for the better. I believe that could be best shown by skipping ahead to see that future play out. That way, we could really get an impact on what these characters did. All of their struggles and sacrifices were not in vein and the world got to live in a better tomorrow because of it.

[thegnasticious]

Farewell The Walking Dead

This is not much an expository piece as much of it is an opinion. A relatively popular show in recent history is known as The Walking Dead. It is finally coming to a grinding halt at its 13th season, likely to open up room for spin-offs, and rival production teams to branch off. It should also be noted The Walking Dead is now a title on Disney + (UK)

The original seasons of The Walking Dead traversed parts of Atlanta, showing Rick’s character in a sort of singular conflict. This as with the later Darryl focused episodes, tredded better ground than ones which seem to focus on the group, jumping from the conflicts of a deaf person to all sorts of stuff (even a 3D tiger). In my opinion the earlier show is what drove the popularity, the later institutionalization of it, led to a jumping over the shark effect. If Fonzie jumped the shark some 18 more times in individual episodes after. Like Gilligan and the island, TWD relied on tropes usually limiting or altogether hampering a lead character’s ability to seemingly escape the show. Rick and The Junkyard lady are the only early escapees, and after he leaves the show, the show really lost its grips. For a while it tried to course back on track, but would fall victim of crowd-funded script decisions, that were usually more in lieu of driving individual actor’s careers than the whole show.

TWD has an interesting presence still, even given its room for ridiculous redundancy, and occasionally good acting performances, as well as bad. The current show is definitely a strange joke of what it once was, but maybe beating the dead horse is the proper ending to such a mess of a mid-show conflict. I recall the show getting particularly stupid after the Rick/Negan stained glass attack. But I still sat it through, and I plan to watch it to the end, no matter how stupid it gets. And believe me from the child narrated flashbacks every episode, it gets real stupid.

I think most true fans of the show want to see it ended. It can’t do much more, and arguably the show was mostly over when they discovered the disease center in that arena place. I would say that about surmised the show. The current show is so lost, that even a conclusion won’t setup for an easy transfer, that’s why hopefully a lot of these supporting characters die off somehow. The story has way too many driving elements, and every character has been given way too much room for survival. Obviously by the spin-offs announced it can be assumed Negan, Rick, Michonne, Darryl, Carol, and a few others will be making it out. I forecast Eugene is gonna go the way of Abraham, he has had a really long go, and all he keeps doing is things in reflection of self-interest (love in the apocalypse is sweet, but shit man isn’t there better things you can be focusing on). He also puts the safety of the group at risk multiple times for what turns into some, “be sorry for me, I just love her”, or whatever. I’ve kind of had it with his arc, and I hope him and the commonwealth go their own way. Also those Stephanie reaction shots look like they were taken out of a smooth jazz adult film.

I’ve noticed that most of the episodes done by Bear Mc and Greg Nicotero on set, tend to be the best. These had a sort of gritty realness, that seems intentionally sapped in later episodes. Be this for a sensitization of hopes of a child-centric series, I’m truly not sure what they going for here. My favorite arc of the show was the Darryl arc with his brother. To me that was the most powerful, and the earlier conflicts without leading tyrants, tended to have more impact. Almost all of the leading bad guys have their bad acting moments in the show. From Lance’s over-done eye movements, to the Governor’s stale presence not many of the bad guys were as well-acted as the main characters (besides Negan of course, phenomenal performance all through-out, even when show is doo doo butter).

In recent shows, TWD has had a really long run. It didn’t quite break the record, but it definitely set a standard for any zombie show to come. I personally hope the show goes back to its roots through spin-offs, and away from things certain producers who joined the show wanted to do, many of these things being deviations from the core show. Maybe the later show is just a result of too many chefs in the kitchen, it is unsure why such a mixed meal came from so much work. Overall ending it and starring individual teams and pursuants for those IPs seems to be the best route. Not sure what’ll come next, but the show being freed from itself can only be a good thing

[popculturebuffet]

Lilo and Stitch Crossover Arc: “Rufus” (Kim Possible) Better and Worse (Paid for by WeirdKev27)

Aloha all you happy people! It’s back to Kauai for the third of my look at LIlo and Stitch’s crossover episodes! This retrospective was made possible by WeirdKev27, who had the idea for it and paid for me to review these episodes. You too can buy reviews for only 5 bucks a pop. Just go to my ask, Direct Messages or discord.

Now with my plugging out of the way, this one, out of all four is the one I looked forward to the most, and out of the four shows in this crossoverathon to make the trip to the Kauai, this one is hands down my faviorite. 

Kim Possible was just damn good and having rewatched a handful of episodes and the movie (Easily one of my faviorite Disney movies and the best DCOM, I will not back down on either), I can say it holds up every bit as good as it did in the early 2000′s. Frankly like Danny Phantom i’m surprised I never thought to get to it till now. But no time like the present: The show proper is a fun super spy sendup, but still feels unique: Instead of i’ts Teen Superspy working for some knockoff of MI6 or S.H.I.E.L.D., Kim is self employed, simply helping people because it’s the right thign to do and not for any reward with the help of her bumbling  but loveable sidekick and future boyfriend Ron, though the romance angle wasn’t overplayed with the two, just hinted at here and there, enough to make it plausable for Ron to realize he has feelings in the movie and for Kim to return them and frankly it’s probably the best handled “Friends to lovers’ plot i’ve seen in a children’s cartoon. I”ll get more into that if I hit my stretch goal for it on patreon, more on that at the end of the review, but while it has no baring on this review I still felt it worth noting as that trope is NOT easy to pull off.

Point is, the show was smart, funny, engaging and had two great characters, a tremendously talented voice cast, and more anchoring it. It was a treasured part of my adolsence. It also had one of the only succesful “Save our show” campagins from fans i’ve ever seen. Despite So The Drama having been written as a finale and having reached Disney’s episode count, fan demand for a fourth season was so incredibly high we got one and it’s to this day one of the very few Disney shows to live past three seasons as a result. The show is in full on Disney Plus, along with the movie, which I HIGHLY recommend and hope I get to talk about, and the recent live action remake movie which .. is not bad. Not GREAT but the leads do make a good kim and ron, paticuarlly my boy Sean Gambone as Ron, and for a live action remake it really does get the spirit of the show. 

But obviously we’re not here to talk about the show proper, though I REALLY want to now, but instead it’s crossover. So far the crossovers for Lilo and Stitch have been, much like said live action remake, OKAY, but nothing amazing, often shoving in sideplots related to Lilo and Stitch proper we didn’t need, forced morals and not really having a good amount of character intraction. The good news is this crossover DOES fix a lot of that.. the bad is that it also has some new problems, and still falls into some of the same traps the other episodes have. See what I mean with the full review under the cut!

We open at night, with Lilo and Stitch playing hide and seek. Adorably though Sttich dosen’t quite get the hang of it and proudly announces where he is. However things are quickly interupted when he’s kidnaped by a mystery ship out of the blue. It’s a good hook to start with, leaving us wondering who it could be...

And thus, if you hadn’t gone into this episode knwoing it was a crossover, giving us a hell of a reveal with a cut to Dr. Drakken being the one to kidnap stitch!

Look I love this Doofus. He’s easily one of John DiMaggio’s best roles, up there with Jake and Bender, and the one along with Bender that cemented his career. as one of voice acting’s finest. He’s just so loveably incompetent, over the top and quick to bicker with Sheego, which leads to some of the funneist moments in his home series as she’d either skewer him good or he’d shove his boot in his mouth and help her point instead of his own. He’s just such a great character and he not only fits neatly into Lilo and Stitch’s world, but the writers clearly get him perfectly. We get a hilarious bit where, fed up with Hamsterviel, who he’s teamed up with, he simply fakes the radio going out, adjusting the dials purposfully to make it come in buggy something I GUARANTEE he put in for SHeego and I gurantee she saw right through. His plan is to create a clone army of Stiches.. meaning Hamsterviel’s big evil plan.. is a copy of someone else’s.

Lilo goes to Jumb and Pleakly, the latter of whom has been collecting magazines adorably. Lilo plans to go after Stitch but Jumba says she can’t go on dangerous missions without him and to get a professional and this part.. does not work for me. Most of the time Jumba ENABLES Lilo’s behaviors and while not wanting an 8 year old to run out into the night is a good call, he also suggests getting help.. instead of you know GOING WITH HER WHEN IT’S LIGHT. It sounds more like Nani’s idea... it fits her more to not want Lilo to run out and to want to get help versus Jumba whose admant about keeping secrecy yet very lax on things, and you know would BE concerned that his prized creation was suddenly stolen and actually think about it. He’s just so horribly out of character it hurts. 

And Nani’s absence really hurts the episode. See the last two, as much as I missed the lovely and talented Tia Carrere’s presence, didn’t really need her, though still could’ve included her: she could’ve made a cameo at the start since Lilo was there to visit her and she woul’dve made a better target for Spats than trudy, with Oscar fighting Jumba instead, allowing us some crossover interactions instead of having Jumba argue with a random asshole the episode wrote in. But it’s minor stuff. Here though? Her being the one to tell Lilo not to go would’ve made more sense: She’s protective by nature, and while she’s let go more since the movie, it’d make sense for her NOT to want Lilo to blindly chase after someone who beat stitch of all beings, as well as for her ot be the one to later tell Kim not to let lilo be involved. It’d be stronger coming from her sister and surrogate mother than Pleakly and it would’ve been a better arc to have Nani let Lilo off the leash so to speak and accept she needed to save kim. Instead she’s just gone for no reason and Jumba is grosly out of character and i’m disapointed. 

That said the setup is the best and most intergrated so far: Pleakly sees an article about kim so he reaches out to her via a message on her site, while Lilo is stubborn about not being help.. obnoxiously so to the point it hurts the episode. While her being inscure about someone else saving Sttich would be fine, the episode never adresses that and instead just has her say she can because shut pu instead of accepting help. The episode would’ve flowed better if instead she accepted kim but Nani had Kim push her away, and thus create more problems. More on that in a bit. 

But as I said this setup is great: it uses BOTH shows for once isntead of feeling like the first two, and honestly the next one judging by the blurb on the wiki, where its just “Hey x character visits Kauai”, here it blends both: The two main villians team up, and Kim is logically called for help since that’s what she does and they don’t want to risk lilo’s saftey. It’s good stuff. 

So our other heroes enter the episode, on a ritzy jet as Kim’s dad had an old college friend with an airline. I admit the episode weirdly downplays Kim’s penchant for getting rides, getting a helicopter that appears to be a touring one and getting this one via her dad instead of the usual person who owes her a favor. IT was a neat part of her character: that she got help from people she already helped on adventure’s we hadn’t seen to establish she can’t drive herself yet and to show she’s an experinced heroine with a lot of history before the show started. I also like how a handful of episodes after season 1 had returns from people we HAD seen before or linked to them, a clever way of having callbacks. 

It’s simple stuff Kim is ready for the wrold saving mision and ron hopes to get a vacation in. Nothing too out of the ordinary. 

So the next day Lilo tries to go it solo but is spotted before she can leave, while Pleakly has built a.. photo colloage of Kim’s face on the wall...

... no wait i’m getting paid for this. Nevermind. 

It is funny as it is unsettling though and Kim arrives and Pleakly faints.. Ron also arrives doing fake kung fu moves. This episode gets ron about half right... they overdo it a bit on the shenanigans, but Will Freidle’s natural charm and talent mean that even standard ron bits coughed up by a cat onto a page and used for this script still work simply because he’s that good at delivery. 

We also get the who’s on first bit you all knew was coming as Kim asking what’s the Sitch confuses lilo and i’ts .. pretty funny. Again you could see it coming from a mile away, but Daveigh Chase and Christy Carlson Ramano really sell the hell out of it and we get a nice runner after of Kim misprouncing his name and trying NOT to say her usual catchphrase. 

She also gets filled in on the alien thing... and while she admits i’ts a lot to swallow, she also admits she’s seen weirder. And given this episode would, by airdate (ignoring the one for So the Drama as that aired before the last batch of season 3 episodes but continuity wise takes place between seasons 3 and 4), take place around the same time as the season 3 intended finale “Team Impossible”, by this point she’s seen vengeful fishteens mutated by a horrifying summer camp, a rogue gentecist who basis her crimes against nature on a beanie baby knockoff, magical monkey based kung fu, a magican egyptian amulet, killer robot’s resembling teenage girls, a body swap episode, a plan using a barcode to destroy the internet, an attack on canada, a giant poodle, a complicated time travel plot, a trucker with a mullet, her sidekick getting turned into a surprisingly competent supervillian, and draken’s plan to use his rap career to promote brainwashing shampoo. And that’s just a handful of the things I was reminded of on the episode list. So yeah, this isn’t THAT much of a stretch. Oh and lest you think Kim never encountered aliens the series finale was an alien invasion by aliens Draken had pissed off earlier in the season. Suprised Lilo didn’t you know have Stitch and the family army pitch in. Maybe Leory and Stitch was going on at the same time? 

Point is she’s in but goes with Pleakly in trying to keep Lilo out of it. And here’s yet another place the episode missteps: Kim’s REALLY patronizing to Lilo, treating her like she can’t do anything and later ignoring her advice when she brings up the current later, something that ends up getting Kim caught. The latter part especially bugs me since Kim normally listens to her clients pretty well, and had she doubted him could’ve at least asked Waid since she contacts him in the same scene. Speaking of which THAT’S why I feel her patronizing “not now kiddo” atittude dosen’t work: her spy master IS a child, her brothers have helped out multiple times, and the incident I mentioned from where she met her younger cousin who idolized her at an old west town was understandable: Her cousin was getting into dangerous stuff and throwing herself out there recklessly with no regards to her own saftey and impeding the mission with her well meant antics. Lilo.. knows who their looking for, knows the island well, and knows stitch’s weaknesses. And she goes from being annoyingly hostlile to kim to helpful, so it makes kim even more obnoxious for not accepting said help. It’s just.. draining as when this part of the plot ISN’T in play, Kim is fine. She’s her usual self.. not AS well written as the parent show, a bit too reliant on her catchphrases, but still not half bad and Christy Carlson Romanao, like Fredle helps paper over the weaker bits of the script.  She’s not even out of character in her actions, as she does have a tendency to think she knows everything or undereistmate people.. the problem is it’s written poorly enough she comes across as insufferable, and unlike the show, where she actually learned something here.. she just learns to work as a team? When she does on a regular basis with Wade and Ron? 

It’s just so frustrating because they almost had it just right, but instead just had to try and put some half assed moral about teamwork in there. They broke from the formula of having an experiment of the week but they still just HAD to keep to their own formula. And look Kim Possible has it’s own formula.. but it used that to great effect, often using the episode’s plot to shake it up in fun ways, and the plots were still diffrent enough and the villians bold and intrestin genough that it didn’t grate.  This is starting to grate. And I do remember good and intresting episodes of the show.. but i’m starting tor ealize why I don’t remember NEARLY as much of Lilo and Stitch as I do the other shows it’s crossing over with: it’s so bolted to the formula they all just sorta blend together. It’s really fucking disheartning to realize something you loved so damn much as a kid just.. isn’t as good as you remember. And with these other shows.. I don’t have that as much. I accept proud family’s fault, Jake Long actually seems MORE intresting than it was at the time, and rewatching kim possible it’s excellent, same with recess coming up. I really need to watch more Recess. The most disheartining thing about this arc is the crossover just shows how BETTER the other shows were. Lilo and Stitch wasn’t a BAD show, and it isn’t here.. but it’s a mediroce one. it has a good premise. but it feels like they just don’t break away from the premise enough. This just... hurts a lot to type and realize. I really loved this show and movie as a kid and while the movie likely still holds up this.. this just dosen’t. 

I need a moment... i’m breaking open the glass case containing my emergency patrick stewart clip excuse me...

That.. I needed that. 

So before the bicker sisters can head off, we get our goofy comedy subplot: Jumba thinks Rufus is one of his experiments, one that could destroy the universe if not cancel and is highly unstable. As for why this one wouldn’t of worked out, I get why: it’s TOO powerful. Stitch is a weapon of mass distruction in a cuddly package, but he’s also easily deployable, kind of like Wolverine if he was in the body of a cartoon mascot. Having the THREAT of destroying ap lanet is fine and good for the long term but it does you no good if you can’t control it and i’td just destroy you too. 

So he and Pleakly try to steal rufus without telling Ron why after Ron naturlaly refuses to sel land a chase insues. So while the boys and gender fluid person have their comedy plot, the girls head to where stitch was taken and find Draken’s glove.... they know it’s his because he put a note saying “return to dr. draken, his mother gave it to him”. That’s just.. fucking precious. And entirely in character. So kim aranges a ride, and dives into the ocean, but finds lilo in her parachute, and tries to send her back despite LIlo offering valuable advice both about the area , the current I mentioned earlier, and about stitch, i.e. Draken’s base is underwater (something Kim didn’t realize which feels odd for her), because Stitch can’t swim, something I genuinely forgot. 

So while Kim sends Lilo back, or rather intercut with that but I choose to compress plots for my own convinence we cut back to Drakken and Shego. And I WAS worried that Shego wouldn’t show up, she wasn’t in the synopsis or anything and was delighted to find that nope she’s here. Drakken just isn’t the same without her.. I mean I liked the recurring subplot in season 4 where other villians would break her out, that was great, but in the end the two need each other. I may not ship them romantically but as a comedy team one just needs the other: Drakken needs Shego to cut down his ego and Shego needs someone to snark at and complain about. Sullivan and DiMaggio just had perfect chemistry and it’s easy to see why Drakken and Shego went from just another part of the Rogue’s Gallery to Kim’s arch enemies. 

Which is why I am sad Gantu and 625 don’t show up for this one. I mean I can buy it: Hamsterviel likely is doing this on the sly to see if he can find a better minon, but the two sets of villians have similar dynamics and i’d love to see Shego and 625 dunk on their bosses together. It’s a really big missed opportunity but I do get it as they may of just nto been able to fit the two together or it may of been hard to block a lot of scenes iwth the human sized drakken and the giant sized gantu. So unlike a lot of missed opportunites in the other episodes, this one I at least can understand. 

We get some GREAT banter with the two though. Out of the four guest characters in this one the crew really got Drakken and Shego down and the two bicker like any episode of Kim Possible, with Shego pointing out the massive bill on Stitch’s cage and how Drakken’s tried cloning about five times now and it’s never worked, and of course how he’s 50 50 splitting with a hamster bellow his station. Seriously why get rid of Gantu and 625 but keep the annoying rodent, I don’t get you episode. 

Of course while they quack quack bicker bicker Stitch escapes and Shego gives chase. Sadly we don’t get a fight between the two like we did with Jake, another missed opprotunity but Stitch getting out of her grasp by licking her is objectively funny. Stitch finds he’s underwater though and gets recaptured. 

Kim gets captured for the first time shortly after as the current caught her, but luckily she has kimunicator gloves and calls waid to call ron. Meanwhile Ron finally catches rufus back and Jumba explains the situation.. but Ron understandably dosen’t want to give up his buddy especially since Rufus has shown no signs of being a planet killer before. He’s not mooncake... althought i do think those two could hang. God now I just want a final space kim possible crossover to wash this out of my mouth. 

So it’s down to Lilo, the really not all that ambigiously gay their pretty darn gay duo, and Ron to save the day. Lilo finally gets to do what she kept asking kim to do: use jumbas hot rod car spaceship thing to go down under the sea, and they send Lilo and Rufus in since hteir small enough to get in and suriive the pressures. Our heroes arrive and Drakken is nonplussed.. only for Lilo to prove WHY she can keep an alien in line by freeing stitch from teh leash drakken has him on using kim’s grapple gun, and then frees kim. The good guys win and the bad guys loose and the base starts to self destruct.. eh they’ll be fine. They still have the movie to get to. 

So time for the wrap up: Stitch sniffs Rufus and confirms what the audience knew... that he’s a naked mole rat not an experiment. Which didn’t make sense to begin with for either show: Jumba’s archive should’ve been able to scan him or something (And if not he could build something to do that), and Kim Possible not only implied from day one Ron had Rufus a while, long before the rain of the pods, but A Stitch in Time outright confirms Ron bought him years ago in middle school. It just makes no sense and while it thankfully dosen’t take up a ton of the episode it still takes up too much. 

But with that our heroes prepare to part on good terms but Pleakly decides to celebrate with  Luau. Kim’s repsonse “Well I can do anything...”

And we get a gratuitous luau sequence! I do love a job that allows me to type the phrase “Gratuitous Luau Sequence’ They clearly ran short and we just get a good minute of everyone doing hula dances for no reason. I mean.. you could’ve done a quick gag with the experiment who was mistaken for Rufus... who I now realize given the finale was befriended by someone. I’m headcanoning now Kim and Ron came back for that one and Kim had him sent to space as part of one her dad’s projects where he and earth would be safer and he could help with space missions or something. 

Final Thoughts: As you could tell I had mixed thoughts. As a crossover this melded things better, had a more original plot and the actors from Kim Possible brought their a-game.. but once again some disapointing characteteriztion and downright stupid decisions really let the episode down. These episodes just depress me every time and I’m looking forward to being done.. which given how excited I was going into this.. yeah. Like all of these despite their flaws I recommend checking it out if you like Kim Possible, if nothing else than for some extra drakken shego banter but.. keep your expectations low.

Next Time on Kim Possible: A team of spiteful assholes who are in a way repsonsible for Kim’s Career try to shut her down. It’s the intended finale episode outisde of hte movie people buckle up.. or you would if I was doing any of these. Though I should do “Team IMpossible” at some point. 

On the finale of these crossovers: The Recess Gang are the final visitors to Kuai as Lilo must find and stop a lazy monster... no i’m not guest starring too. 

Tommorow: Another kev one this time by patreon as I put two similar episodes of a show or franchise against each other and ask “Who Did It Better?” This time it’s two episodes of Celebrity Death Match, original versus revivial may the original.. probably win. 

If you liked this review, please consider supporting my patreon, YOU CAN FIND THE LINK TO IT HERE.  For just 2 bucks a month you get access to my discord, to pick a short each time I do one of my shortstravaganzas, and acess to my Patreon exclusive reviews! Next month I intend to do one for the show whose crossover gets the most likes within a week of it’s relase. Proud Family has already passed American Dragon so you have a week to get it ahed. And if you like Kim Possible, help me reach my 25 dollar stretch goal! At that i’ll review So The Drama, along with the Recess and Proud Family Movies. So check it out and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[muninnhuginn]

Thoughts as of end of s1 of Link Click. This is... mostly just going to be spam.

- I’ve been thinking this the last few episodes and I think as of the finale I still believe it to be the case that the show works best when trying to tell fairly self-contained stories about people and their relationships.

- Ngl, I’d seen some speculation online about an “opposing” person who could possess people, but I hadn’t really bought into it until Liu Min suddenly lost control of his legs again in the last ep. I guess all the mentions of “my friend” as well as the police case weren’t totally for nothing. I do feel the plot side of things has been weaker than the rest, so we’ll have to see how this spins out in s2.

Rest of thoughts under cut.

- My main qualm tbh is how Emma’s been handled. In episode one, they made sure to characterise her by her connections with her boss, her parents, and generally did a really good job of making people empathise with her and giving a hopeful end to her story before pulling the rug out from under everyone’s feet. So, episode one on its own I don’t take issue with because for shock impact it worked super effectively and hit emotionally hard because of the entire setup. What I personally didn’t like was how we returned to her in later episodes, found out it was worse than expected, and then the writers tried to pull the exact same trick as episode one. I’m not going to say the scene at the bridge wasn’t still emotional because it was, but I do find it a bit... not sure the best word to use here... “cheap”, perhaps? Because you give hope and take it away once, that works. But to do so again after even more build-up about potentially saving her? It does feel a bit like they’re just trying to cash in emotional hit points, just a tad.

- Semi-related to the last point is my half belief that Emma’s death was always a node and so CXS didn’t actually cause her death so much as change the opportunity for when Liu Min could get at her. (This is also somewhat backed up by Lu Guang’s confusion over how Emma could be saved when it looked like CXS was persuading her successfully not to jump) However, CXS believes (and the way it’s presented to the audience also agrees with this, I’d say) that Emma would originally have survived and CXS sending the message altered the node to cause her death. Ultimately, I lean towards the former explanation, but I don’t know which is “correct”.

- Time travel mechanics. As you can tell by the above, as of the finale, I’m not totally sure as to how these actually work. The mechanics started fairly solid by virtue of being deliberately ambiguous around it all and sticking to the node explanation. However, I think they start losing consistency around the point of the Doudou episode with the revelation that if CXS goes into a picture from CCTV footage he’ll just appear in them as himself rather than as whoever took the photo. And the fact that the past was clearly changed enough to guarantee Doudou’s safety when that seemed tied in with the node of him being abducted. I think the latter I can perhaps try to explain away if you try to make it about “visible nodes” rather than just “nodes”. By which I mean, if the situation as LG/CXS understood it was that someone had died on x day, then they could manipulate the situation so that this person only appeared to die on x day, and then that person had to not be revealed as alive to them until the present day. And this would all check out because to them the nodes hadn’t been “changed”. That said, I’m not sure at all if that was what was intended by the writers or if I’m just trying to explain away plot holes here.

- My favourite arc is definitely the earthquake one. I’m not sure how well it’ll hold up on rewatch, but on my first go around every single episode in that arc worked excellently and for different reasons, at that. First episode was more about establishing the scene and near the end there’s the worry Cheng Xiaoshi is going to be impulsive again. Second episode is meeting the characters of the arc more and just building the sense of unease because why is Lu Guang saying nothing will change? And then the last episode is where you know where it’s going and the episode uses that to full effect, especially with Chen Xiao’s mum and the parallels to Cheng Xiaoshi’s own parents. I think if I were to make someone watch any arc within the series, this would be the one I’d recommend.

- The fact there’s going to be a season 2 reassures me at least on one of my major quibbles with the show, namely how Cheng Xiaoshi had a lot more development than Lu Guang or Qiao Ling. Definitely hoping that next season is going to use the opportunity to fill in all the gaps we’ve left there, especially given how promotional materials, the opening, and the ending all give the impression of a much more balanced cast than we ended up getting in season 1?

- I’ve barely skimmed around the fandom for this series beyond finding general discussion threads for each episode, so I don’t know how correct my impression is here, but I feel like the sound design for the episodes is super underrated. Whenever it uses the ending music to build tension before cutting to the ending proper, for one. But I think the best use of music was in the original Xu Shanshan confrontation with “Liu Min” as well as its replay ft. Cheng Xiaoshi. The insert songs were also pretty good. (Meanwhile my impression on the art/animation is that I like it personally for its quirks and how it shows expressions really well, but I can definitely see how it may be an acquired taste)

So yeah, those are my thoughts overall. I guess it I were to give the series a rating I’d say around 7.5/10 overall, though my opinion varies depending on the arc and I think that how s2 pans out when that releases could definitely affect my opinion of s1.

[viroro-kun]

My Review of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime (2019)

[The following post is a repost of a thread originally published on Reddit in November 17th, 2019, titled “My final review of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime”, which I’m sharing here again for archival purposes. I may eventually do a new one and this post is meant to only reflect my thoughts at the time. It will also not be updated with later information to keep it consistent with the original] About two weeks ago, the Sun & Moon series of the Pokémon Anime concluded after a run of three years, ending up as what's probably one of the most controversial entries of the show, with fans either loving it as a fresh take on the series or disliking it for several issues that cropped up over time. Now, after reviewing the series for the length of the aforementioned three years and at the eve of the beginning of the newer series, I'd like to pass my personal, final judgement of the Alolan series. Now, first of all, I think a preamble is necessary: all of what I will explain is my opinion and nothing else, and this isn't meant to be senseless bashing of the Sun & Moon series, either. I treasure striving to be objective and analytical above all else, and while I of course can't claim mine will be an absolutely perfect and objectively correct review, I will do my best to share my thoughts on the matter, while explaining why I feel this specific way.Secondly, I'd like to address an argument I've occasionally seen brought up, that due to Sun & Moon's seeming focus on comedy and slice of life it's not possible to compare it to previous seasons. And while that may apply for some specific choices it made, I don't believe that's the case: it was still set in a new region of the Pokémon world, still had Ash undertake the local region-wide challenge, still had a structure involving unimportant self-contained episodes (which we could call 'filler' in an useful but technically inaccurate definition) surrounding the plot-based ones, and still ended up with a League at a climax for it all. Therefore, at least on a structural and plot standpoint, there are enough commonalities to make a comparison possible, and that's where I plan to dig in particular to explain my stance.

Before I move to the meat of it, however, I want to spend some words of praise for some things I feel this series did right or at least deserves some compliments for, overall. First of all, I think that Sun & Moon does great in mantaining a chill, comfy atmosphere which to a degree makes it stand out from previous seasons, and I understand why this was appealing for some previous fans of the series. Most of the cast is pretty likable on the whole with particular props to Ash's Alolan Pokémon team managing to mantain lots of expressivity in all situations, and the series has a decent willingness to explore some concepts previous seasons only lightly touched on. The show also foregoes a lot typical Team Rocket shenanigans for different kinds of plots, making it great for people who find their usage stale and played out by now, and the simplified art style allowed for some pretty good sequences both in battle and out. At its best, the series can produce some of the best moments of this Anime as a whole, and it was at least the first series to let go of some limitations that were just weighting the show down at this point. While I think several of these pros also have indirect cons attached to them (especially in terms of tone and character usage), these are all things I feel need to be pointed out in positive for the series.With that said, I'd like to begin my proper dissection of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime.

Pokémon Sun & Moon - A Pokémon Anime in an Identity Crisis

1. Plot Pacing and Development: The Problem of the Stationary Setting and the "Happy Bubble"

Everyone who has heard of the Sun & Moon Anime is probably aware of its biggest break from tradition: rather than being an adventure series, this entry in the long-running Pokémon series decided to take place in a single location with occasional detours by having Ash enroll in the Pokémon School, shifting the general tone of the series towards a more slice of life approach. This had a significant effect on how the story developed, but in my opinion, if there's a fundamental issue of the Sun & Moon series, it's probably this one. Because rather than committing to the change, the writers appeared to want to have their cake and eat it too.

Specifically, adventure series and slice of life have radically opposed mission statements: for the first, progression and rising action are an important, consistent story engine moving the plot forward; the second is instead far more laidback, focused more on enjoying the moment and offering low stakes and drama more often than not, especially Sun & Moon's chosen brand of it that's closer to a sit-com than a proper slice of life. Pretty much, adventure series have a degree of development in them, while slice of life is defined by the lack of said development.

Now, I'm not saying Pokémon characters were always amazing examples of character development, or that every series prior was well-written. But the structure itself was sound, as you had Ash embarked in a defined goal of winning the League as part of his vague dream to become a Pokémon Master, having filler adventures on the way, but always undertaking rising action from the first to last Gym and occasional rivals, until the climax of the journey at the League (and in Kalos' case, the Team Flare arc). We see Ash, and occasionally his friends, actively train, fight or improve on the path to their goals, while the narration itself always reminds us of what the current major objective is. Even when the episode doesn't actually contribute to the larger story, the viewer always has a reassurance that the next objective will be reached eventually.

The structure of Sun & Moon, by comparison, is inherently more passive more often than not, as you have Ash and the others waiting for the plot to happen to them. Instead of having Ash actively seek a new challenge, you see him sitting down and wait for something specific to make him go and progress, and so does everyone else, with only rare exceptions. The characters are effectively static until the plot decides to move them, and while this could superficially resemble the previous structure (as both have a progression that could be defined as arbitrary), the Sun & Moon series barely, if ever, reassured the viewer to still remember the goals it set up, or even what the next one to come is.

Now, inherently, the characters being passive recipients of plot isn't a bad thing, it's just how slice of life stories tend to work. The problem of Sun & Moon, however, was that beyond the vague and SoL-friendly concept of Ash at the Pokémon School they still had Ash pursue the Island Trials (and in fact, he's impressed by the concept of mastering Z-Moves before he even enrolls in the school), which gave the show a problem: it wanted to be a chill story focusing more on small time hijinks than big adventures, while still taking on a structure that demanded to follow the rules of an adventure series, creating an inherent contradiction.

What I mean is that, since the Island Trials were still part of Ash's stay in Alola, the show was still supposed to abide to the rising action leading to a climax, giving the show a direction that it had to fulfill by its end rather than have an open premise with occasional plotlines (example: GeGeGe no Kitaro, where the open premise is 'Kitaro deals with evil Yokai' with every other longer plotline spinning from there). It's something that pretty much prevents the viewer from fully enjoying the more quiet romps, because in the mind of a viewer expecting progression, these are just a diversion over the more important goal Ash has in the region. Now, in fairness to Sun & Moon, the show seemed aware of the tension and made sure to tie each Trial Ash did into either school trips or wanting to get specific Crystals, but beyond making it seem like Ash didn't care much for something he claimed he wasn't interested in (especially with wanderlust being a previously estabilished character trait of his), this ran into another big issue of Sun & Moon: rather than a sense of rising action, pretty much every Island Trial Ash did was narratively unrelated to each other, especially once it was revealed that Ash didn't need to complete any of them to access the Alola League, in contrast with how every badge was important and necessary in previous regions.

This specific issue wasn't however unique to Ash, but rather a persistent problem in pretty much every element and story arc of the series: be it Ash's quest, Guzma's struggles, Rowlet's rivalry with Hau's Dartrix/Decidueye, Lycanroc's rage issues, Lillie's goal to be able to touch every Pokémon again, the Necrozma and Aether arcs to even the Alola League and anything in between, almost all of them had only the bare minimum of buildup and either ended as soon as they got teased or happened to be sidelined for a large amount of episodes before they got their due focus, if not both at once. While some of these arcs ranged from alright to pretty great (Litten's pre-capture arc dealing with Stoutland's passing, or the Guzma-related segments of the Alola League), there are quire a few (chiefly Necrozma) that were ruined by a combination of lacking setup work and the feeling that, simply put, nothing mattered that much. Sure, the arcs could be mentioned here and there, and some can set up things for the future (like how Aether leads to the Ultra Guardians), but on the whole, the arcs are effectively done-in-one in terms of lasting impact. Unlike how in previous shows you could've had stuff like Ash's and Dawn's intertwined journeys, here you have Stoutland lose relevance in terms of influence to Litten as soon as he dies, where save for Stoutland brief cameo as a spirit on Poni Island his storyline got shifted in the unrelated rivalry with Kukui's Incineroar.

This last example, in particular, brings up another of the big issues of Sun & Moon, one that can be divided in three parts: plot pacing, plot segregation, and the "happy bubble".

In regards to plot pacing, one of the most notorious problems brought up for this series is the fact that, to put it simply, each plotpoint will only progress when the show decided they have to, which led to things like Lillie going almost an entire real time year between getting her Z-Crystal and then her Z-Ring, or Ash doing absolutely nothing about his Lycanroc's raging issues for getting dirty for close to thirty episodes before they happened again in the Ula'Ula arc, during which neither character gave any hints of even thinking about these lingering elements in any way even if it was clear setup to be followed on. This, coupled with the aforementioned lack of a constant reminder of the next destination, just made for a frustrating waiting game in terms of the next major point of progression.

A related issue is the plot segregation, or specifically, how each major arc is effectively removed from the others, from Kiawe and Sophocles' occasional focus episodes to more important stuff like Lillie's Pokémon phobia, her and Gladion's later interest in finding their father, Lana's desire to create a balloon to explore the ocean with, Ash's Island Trials, and so on. It made these characters feel like they exist in their own separate paths, never to intersect, something the evolution episode in the Poni Island arc somewhat exemplifies since Sophocles' and Lana's efforts happen on completely distinct plotlines and locations. As I explained above this also happens with major arcs, like how the Necrozma arc's only contribution to the wider narrative was sending Poipole home (and given its later offscreen evolution and power up, one could make a case the arc had a negative impact on the series). The segregation also had the effect of having the plot act like something flat out doesn’t exist unless it has been directly showcased, leading to such goofiness as Kukui's best friend Molayne not being invited at his wedding in spite of being Sophocles' cousin, or how absolutely no one was in Poni Island during the Manalo Festival buildup. A good example of the difference, I feel, is this: in previous series, we could've had Serena relate to Ash with her Master Class loss at a significant point of his character arc during the Winding Woods episode; in this one, Mallow only revealed her mother issues after Lillie's entire arc revolving around her mother was resolved, with the two never comparing notes. The closest we get is Ash relating to Lana for his problems with Lycanroc using Continental Crush in Ida's first episode and Lillie trying to help out Ash during his fallout with Rotom, both of which refer to things that happened to them either mostly offscreen or entirely there.

The plot segregation was, in particular, noticeable with the decision to associate three of Ash's Alolan Pokémon (Torracat, Dusk Lycanroc and Rowlet) to specific characters as rivals, with the Pokémon driving the rivalry rather than Ash himself (who had otherwise rather civil, mostly friendly interactions with Kukui, Gladion and Hau). On paper, this should've guaranteed that every Pokémon had their moment to shine, but effectively, it meant that each of them were restricted to mostly their specific rival in terms of focus post-Aether. Lycanroc got Olivia's Grand Trial, the Ula'Ula arc to itself and then the rivalry with Gladion's Midnight Lycanroc, but no other significant usages; Rowlet got roles in the first two Grand Trials, but then spent almost one hundred episodes before its second focus episode, and beyond his friendship with Meltan it only got Hau's battle and a part against Kukui to itself; Torracat was the one absolutely done dirty here, as beyond the Stoutland appearence in Poni Island and the Totem Lurantis battle pre-Aether, all his following focus moments rely on the rivalry with Kukui's Incineroar, with only occasional minor scuffles to its name and a bit of the Guzma battle to its name. That would already be bad enough, but the fact that until the League there's no battle that requires Ash to involve more than two Pokémon (with most of them requiring him only one), Ash's team never actually gets to act as a team until the very final battle of the series, furthering the lacking sense of cohesiveness. Year two of the series was particularly bad in this sense, as most major battles were fought with either Pikachu or Lycanroc while Torracat and Rowlet barely did much.

And lastly, one persistent result of both the plot pacing and the plot segregation was a phenomenon I like to refer to as the "happy bubble," or the tendency of the Sun & Moon series to confine major conflicts and bad moments for the characters only to their specific focus episodes. In previous shows, you could have moments of self-doubt or worry linger even outside dedicated episodes (Dawn's depression for her losing streak, Ash's rivalry with Paul affecting him, and his increasing worries in the latter part of XY being clear examples), but due to Sun & Moon's commitment to fun times before everything else, it means the characters aren't allowed to have any conflict or moments of darkness to later conquer unless they're the focus, and even then resolving them quickly. See how bubbly Lillie is even when she's scared of Pokémon unless the episode is specifically about her, how she never even thought about her father until Gladion reminded her, how Ash's confidence and his relationship with Lycanroc are only focused on in Ula'Ula and then never again, and most noticeably the fact Mallow's dead mother was treated as something that tore her for years but it was only ever directly dealt with in one episode, to the point she's the only family member on Bulbapedia listed under characters of the day. The problem of this bubble is that it pretty much makes it hard to invest in the emotional struggles of these characters because they end up feeling like throwaway moments which are then functionally forgotten, with no sense of constant growth. Characters get their moments, the audience gets invested, and then it's forgotten, with only few and far-in-between moments of exception, and that's another thing making each conflict feel segregated from each other.

If I could sum up everything in one sentence, I'd say this: Sun & Moon is composed by a myriad of pieces, some excellent, some average, some awful and everything in between, that all exist mostly in a vacuum. I'll return to this topic in a bit, as there's another important aspect to touch first.

2. Characters and Their Development: Too Many, Too Little, Too Late

Another aspect of Sun & Moon that's often brought up is the decision to have a main cast of six counting Ash, with the game Trial Captains Mallow, Lana, Kiawe and Sophocles alongside plot-important character Lillie turned into Ash's classmates. These characters have been as much a point of praise as they were of criticism, with some fans absolutely loving this group while others couldn't absolutely stand them. I feel the best way to tackle this is to first list how I feel each character was handled in terms of planning and development, before going into their relationships and the rest of the cast, starting with the humans and then going through Ash's Pokémon before closing on Ash himself. I will say to start with, however, that none of these characters is inherently unlikable the way they started as, and most of their later issues came solely from their handling down the line or flaws in how they were approached.

2.1) The companions

Among the companions, Sophocles was probably the one that made the poorer first impressions, as beyond sharing the same type specialty, his game background as an inventor and his Anime presentation as a programmer that sometimes built things gave him a number of unfair comparisons with Clemont, not helped at all by an introduction episode that ranks among the worst ones of this group. That said, I feel by the end he actually ended up being one of the best characters of the group in spite of heavily scattered focus, for one major reason: he's one of the few characters of this group to have a consistent character growth that plays in his dream and that's easily noticeable as the story unfolds. Early on, he starts as the timid, insecure kid that gets easily scared of the dark and needs people and Pokémon's support over everything, but between his first few episodes and the later clarification of his interest in space, it's clear that his development was actually aimed towards him growing into a more independent and confident person and trainer. He goes from being unable to tell his friends that he's not actually leaving Alola after a misunderstanding and only getting his second Pokémon as a gift from Ash to slowly take an interest in rising Charjabug, first with a race and then by evolving it, then deciding to gain a Z-Crystal and a Z-Ring, learning to use it, and ultimately take part in the League in spite of knowing to not be on the same level of his friends, yet still putting his all, with a nice interlude where he takes things into his own hands during the Celesteela mission, and with the race he does to gain his Z-Crystal leading him to confront and surpass his fear of the dark. While still pretty scattered and sidelined, I feel he's a character that's been developed well-enough and that in his post-series aim is actively working towards his dream in a new but productive way by visiting Mossdeep City's Space Center, and definitely my favorite of the Alolan kids as he clearly developed into a better person by the end through a straightforward, traceable progression.

Lana is probably up there with Sophocles in terms of being one of the best characters of this group, and I'd go as far as saying she's probably the best non-Coordinator/Performer Pokégirl out there. While Sophocles ranks high due to getting good personal development, Lana ranks high because, while on paper her dream of creating a big balloon to explore the ocean with is simple and a tad silly, it is something she puts clear effort into and that she never loses track of through the whole series, even with a fairly noticeable void of attention in the mid-series stretch. Between being the first of the non-Kiawe classmates to get a Z-Ring and a Z-Crystal, learning how to use Hydro Vortex, then evolving Popplio to Brionne and then Primarina (while dealing with a Kyogre along the way) while also getting Oceanic Operetta, she's consistently focused on her improvement, and always the best female battler of the bunch. The only thing that really penalizes her is that while her dream is technically achieved, she ultimately gets Oceanic Operetta with offscreen training and they never make a point to highlight that as a big moment, and while her skill development is solid, she remains exactly the same character throughout the series from the first and last episode. An entertaining character for sure, but one that just gets stronger and not much else. Still, she's easily one of the best female leads this series ever had, and a good example of how to make a non-Coordinator-esque female character work well after the pitfalls Misty and Iris fell into.

Kiawe is not far from them, with a pretty solid run slightly marred by a few issues. Specifically, he's probably the best battler of this group that isn't Ash, but he's distinctly characterized as having two "modes" as a character: either the serious, spiritual follower of Alolan traditions, or the one that started popping out more often later in the series where he's an overreacting ham to rival Cilan. I personally feel Kiawe's better moments tends to come from the first mode, not only because he stands out better in a funny sense by being the straight-laced guy in a cast of wacky people, but also because he's the best character to explore the more spiritual angle of Alola, the element that truly makes the region stand out compared to previous ones featured in the series. Unfortunately, beyond the fact the slice of life romps tended to favor his wacky angle more than the serious one, Kiawe is penalized by not quite having a true arc to develop through: he wants to become a stronger trainer and claims so, but all his episodes ultimately end up involving unrelated matters: he catches his Marowak, learns to use a Z-Move with him later on, and ends up getting his Charizard back into working shape after he undertakes Fini's trial to save Ash, but while each of these are overall good showings and he's probably got the best League run of the cast in terms of prowess and skill, they tend to remain isolated instances. It also doesn't help that while his hot-blooded rivalry with Ash can be fairly entertaining and it's teased from episode 2, it ultimately culminates into an underwhelming showdown in the penultimate episode that barely feels like an afterthought. I'd hardly call him a bad character and he still does pretty well even with his issues, but one that could've been handled better on the whole.

A far different story is Lillie, a character that, I feel, suffered from several different issues all at once. To address the elephant in the living room first, let it be said that while they share traits, Anime Lillie and Game Lillie end up being fairly different characters by the end, and while I think Game Lillie is probably one of the best creations of GameFreak, my opinion on her Anime self couldn't be more different, and it's not due to straight comparisons between each other. Now, Lillie doesn't actually start badly: the fact that she has a phobia of touching Pokémon from an unknown source at first actually gave her a nice direction as a character in a way similar yet different from Lana, but it didn't take long for Lillie's major issue to show itself: things happen to her rather than her working towards stuff proactively, and the majority of the time her struggles are resolved by feeling sad or believing really hard with extremely few exceptions. This started already before the Aether arc, where while her episodes were good, they all relied on the exact same formula of Lillie unable to touch Pokémon, being unable to do so and feeling sad about it until she can in a spur-of-the-moment situation, which started to make her episodes feel stale.

The Aether arc seemed to finally change things as it heavily revolved around Lillie, but to anticipate some things I'll delve into more detail later, the changed circumstances ended up weakening both the conflict and her character, making her come across as too unlikable. But beyond that issue, the problem of the Aether arc is that it ensured that Lillie was completely healed of her phobia due to the actions of others rather than herself, which killed off all her character potential and left her with nothing to do for the rest of the series (while the conflict with her mother was completely brushed under the rug after this arc introduced and hastily attempted to resolve it). Sure, she 'grew stronger', and got a Z-Ring and Z-Crystal, but the majority of important things of the Mohn arc were actually dealt with by Gladion, while her own help ended up amounting to still, once more, feeling really hard rather than active work. But the biggest problem of her character is that all of her major achievements derived from either someone else (Silvally healing her phobia by saving her, Gladion actually defeating Totem Kommo-o, her Z-Ring being borrowed from her father, Gladion finding Mohn's Zoroark) or facilitated by outside assistance (her one victory in the League's Battle Royale coming from effectively killstealing a Salamence Kiawe weakened, her battle with Tyranitar having the assistance of a Totem Sandshrew) which made it hard to think she earned her development or truly grow stronger when she ultimately always ended up relying on someone else, especially given her tendency to never act unless prodded (see how she seemed perfectly fine not touching Pokémon for years until Mallow and Ash actively tried to get her to do it, nor try to learn why she has the phobia in the first place, nor thinking about where her father may be). This, alongside the tendency of the series to play up game moments like the Lillie and Solgaleo moment or her change in dress and hairstyle to show her resolve while sapping all the meaning they had in the source material and the habit of the characters to praise Lillie for anything she does no matter how minor or trivial, ultimately made her a character that was borderline insufferable to follow, especially for the classmate pushed as the most important beyond Ash.

The worst of all main characters, however, is without a doubt Mallow. While I have several issues with Lillie's handling as a character, at least her faults come with how the show decided to approach her, while I feel by contrast Mallow was only allowed breadcrumbs of just about anything, something already shown by how she had to wait until episode 18 for her first true focus episode. Back in the earliest episodes I thought her interest in making Aina the most popular restaurant in Alola could've given her a drive as a character similar to the one Lana and at the time Lillie had, only for the story to be content with leaving her where she is. Between the fact her Bounsweet evolved twice in ways that were respectively too sudden and rather unrelated to her and the habit of her focus episodes past her first to focus away from her more than on her (having to share screentime with her brother 'Ulu and Oranguru, specifically), it felt like she was added to the cast because they had to, and while the last year of Sun & Moon tried to put a patch on the problem by giving her emotional moments with her mother and her League match with Lana, said patches had the effect of not feeling very genuine since her mother, as I mentioned above, only really figured in one episode, while Mallow suddenly being afraid of Tsareena getting hurt when she fought in Ultra Space and in other instances just fine just feels like an awkward attempt at giving her an emotional moment that doesn't gel with her characterization too well. If we add onto it that she only mastered her Z-Move during the League itself, her Z-Crystal was gained just by making a burger, and the Shaymin she cared for after meeting her mother effectively did nothing afterwards until its deal was resolved at the last possible second during the final credits of the series because 'Ulu found some Gracidea with no input from Mallow proper, Mallow ended up feeling like the most mishandled characters of this crew, whose character and development felt more like isolated moments than anything cohesive.

The Pokémon of the cast outside of the major ones don't really warrant much talk, the best of the bunch being Kiawe's Marowak for his vibrant personality and good feats, while everyone else ranges from pretty much not too focused on (Turtonator, Charizard, Tsareena, Togedemaru), useful for development but otherwise kinda dull more often than not (Primarina, Vikavolt, Snowy), cute but pointless in spite of heavy buildup (Sandy), and pretty much useless (Shaymin, Magearna outside of being a McGuffin), mostly getting occasional cute moments than anything substantial or productive for their trainers.

2.2) Ash's Pokémon

Beyond the classmates, there's the matter of Ash's Pokémon as well, and I'd like to spend a few words on the Rotomdex. On the whole, he was never the most important character, but I'd say the best way to describe him is that he's a likable character that happened to star in some rather poor episodes: while his overreactions could get annoying sometimes, for the most part he was likable enough, and his existence ensured that Ash would lose his oft-criticized trait to scan Pokémon he already saw that made him come across as dumb, and some of his moments and hobbies made him pretty endearing. His only real problem is that his focus episodes usually tended to focus on rather stupid plots aimed only to comedy, and while three of them are at least arguable, his last true focus episode happened to be one of the worst episodes of the series due to how out-of-character Ash acted under the possibility of Rotom leaving. None of the issues of these episodes were Rotom's fault, but as a minor character, it was somewhat unfortunate for him to receive such a short end of the stick focus-wise.

Going back to Ash's actual Pokémon, beyond the eternal Pikachu, I'd say the one most worth of consideration overall is Torracat (or Incineroar, but he never fought under the form), both in terms of praise and criticism. I say so because, before his capture, Litten seemed to be given unusually large focus, including being the first of Ash's Alolan Pokémon to debut and appearing for several episodes even between his major pre-capture arc, which being among the most tragic and involved capture circumstances seemed to point towards Torracat being the 'ace Pokémon' of the region, only for things to change once Lycanroc entered the picture. To put it simply, Torracat has some rather solid episodes and a personality that very much matches Ash's own, but he often feels like he's only given breadcrumbs of focus. Between only taking part in one minor trial and no Grand Trials, not getting his own associated Z-Crystal until right before the League and having it used only twice counting the test run of it, and his rivalry battle being the only one in the Alola League to happen in the middle of a match rather than at the end of it (which lead to a rather goofy division of him getting declared winner and then fainting after evolving just so it couldn't technically be considered a tie even if it functionally was to preserve his triumph), it feels like the poor Pokémon is never given enough of his due, and while I enjoy his drive to surpass Kukui's Incineroar and especially the way the plotline was figuratively used throughout the Ash VS Kukui battle, it just seems like Torracat is always last in priority in terms of Ash's Pokémon, which makes even his good moments feel like afterthought even with nice bits like his relationship with Lycanroc, especially with how, as touching and well-executed as it was, Stoutland's effect on Torracat is forgotten as soon as it happens, between Fire Fang being mastered exactly one episode later and Stoutland himself only being brought back twice, once as a thought by Ash and only in the second with Stoutland meeting Torracat again in Poni Island, mostly for the purpose of teaching him another move. So, in my opinion, Torracat is a case of a conceptually solid-enough character, that's however penalized both by how little the narrative gave him focus, and the fact that his arc with Stoutland and his later rivalry with Incineroar are pretty much unrelated (for why I consider this a flaw, consider that fellow Fire starter Infernape was able to have a memorably tragic backstory that did dovetail into his major rivalry perfectly, so just asking for a degree of connection isn't outside the realm of what this show can do).

And then there's Lycanroc, the Pokémon that the series wants us to consider the regional ace, which had several issues associated with him. To put this simply, I feel like he was a much better character as a Rockruff than he was after his evolution, mostly for being the perfect mix of adorable, focused, and having actually pronounced rage issues that occasionally popped up but were treated completely seriously, alongside having a pretty good showing in the Olivia battle as a rare final bout to completely not involve Z-Moves in a period where their usage was starting to become excessive. However, after the evolution (which is treated as a rare, one-of-a-kind event due to Rockruff evolving during a rare green flash yet is never actually remarked on beyond very occasional comments that he looks odd that are never treated as much), his handling changes for the worst, specifically for two of his rather ace-worthy moments: its rage form arc, and the way his rivalry with Gladion's Dusk Lycanroc was handled. The first is overall the biggest issue, because it's also symbolic of Sun & Moon's tonal issues since his major challenge to overcome as a Pokémon is the fact that, whenever his fur gets dirty, he goes on murderous rampages, always after acting goofily shocked in a way intended to be humorous, creating a whiplash effect that doesn't make clear how the viewer should find the scene given it first asks us to laugh at Lycanroc and then to be scared of him. This is also only introduced once in the middle of the Aether arc and then never revisited until the Ula'Ula arc, where it's ultimately solved by Ash bringing back memories of how Rockruff used to act about getting dirty that happened completely offscreen, only for the writers to then milk the drama some more two episodes later by now handling the rage mode completely seriously in terms of reactions and using actual rage as the trigger instead of just specifically the fur, in an episode that ultimately relied on Ash not trusting his Pokémon (when he was already somewhat out-of-character by being scared by Lycanroc's rampage after he was willing to hug his blazing Chimchar to calm him down back in Sinnoh). It's all handled in an extremely brief arc and then never again, feeling like an arc that takes elements from both the Infernape and Ash-Greninja arcs while missing the slow buildup and non-regressive development that made those two arcs work (and I'll elaborate more on it in a bit). Beyond this, his rivalry with Gladion's Lycanroc suffers of being extremely sidelined in spite of being the 'major' rivalry of the series: while the two Pokémon did fight three times, the first time was interrupted by Team Rocket (something they stopped doing for major rival battles for quite a while beforehand), the second relying on some very weird resilience by Midnight Lycanroc by not only tanking completely Dusk Lycanroc's Splintered Stormshards to seemingly no damage but also snapping out of confusion to deliver a finishing Z-Move of his own, and the third relying on a battle that was overall not too bad, but felt more like a mid-series squabble than Ash's victory at the Alola League (which is then completely outclassed in spectacle by Ash VS Kukui). Dusk Lycanroc's rivalry isn't actually too bad, but considering how Gladion's Lycanroc is the only major opponent Ash's ace got to fight post-evolution outside the Ula'Ula arc, Kukui's Pokémon (none of which he defeated) and occasional training bout, it did restrict a lot of his feats and ended up with him feeling more like an okay Pokémon than the powerhouse the writing wanted him to seem like. Coupled with a lackluster personal arc, this makes him closer to the Krookodile tier of 'possible aces' than one of the major ones like Charizard or Infernape.

And then we get to Rowlet, the last of the major Alolan four counting Pikachu, and probably the most problematic of the bunch. Much like Torracat and Lycanroc, Rowlet isn't inherently a bad Pokémon, with the first episodes neatly estabilishing two things: yes, he is dopey and loves to sleep a bit too much, but he's also a serious and competent fighter in battle that never fails to impress, making sure that neither side ultimately hurt or diminished the other. His problem is ultimately revolving around two things: he's spent a long time out of focus, and his later focus didn't exactly paint him in a good light. The first is probably the major issue at hand: while both Rowlet and Torracat were heavily sidelined midway into the series, Torracat did at least get a few token episodes to himself, while Rowlet's first real focus episode after his capture one only really comes almost one hundred episodes later. While in the early series this was mitigated by having Rowlet take part in two minor trials and two Grand Trials, this focus is all but forgotten by the second year of the series, with Rowlet reduced to solely a gag Pokémon whose greatest achievement ended up being learning Razor Leaf by sitting on a magical tree. This had the adverse effect of making his gag tries, which previously only showed either in minor matches or not during serious parts of battle, to slowly become more and more prominent. The other issue is that Rowlet had without a doubt the weakest rivalry set up and buildup of the three major Pokémon Ash obtained in Alola, as Hau and his Dartrix only appear in one episode before the League and two of the three battles Ash had with Hau involved major, non-strategy related writing contrivancies to reach the desired outcome (Ash slipping his Grassium-Z and getting distracted to fetch it for Rowlet to lose for the first one; Rowlet's Decidueye hoodie tanking a Z-Move, the overturned loss, and the sudden learning of a Feather Dance that doesn't act like the one Rowlet was trying to master for Rowlet to win in the final one). The way Rowlet acted in the Ash VS Hau battle is kinda emblematic of this, as the oft-debated overturned loss moment involved him falling asleep in the middle a match he was supposedly fired up for just for the sake of a joke and nothing else; regardless of how one wants to justify it, it doesn't change that such a thing never happened before in the series, and it ultimately involved Rowlet betraying the trust Ash put in him just for a scene the writers deemed funny, in what was supposed to be his finest hour (while Rowlet fell asleep in the Hala Grand Trial, it was only after his part of the match ended). Considering also that two of the moves Rowlet learned required the help of his adoptive flock without as much input from Ash and he ultimately ate an Everstone just for a variation of Seed Bomb that turned out to be more a liability than asset throughout the series, not even a cute relationship with Meltan and the fact that he won his last important matches of the series makes up for some of the worst excesses of tonal imbalance and inability to let jokes go in a context that absolutely have no space for his brand of incompetence-based humor.

With the major Alola captures gone, there's just the other two latecomer to discuss, and I'd like to start with Poipole/Naganadel, specifically because he's probably one of the worst handled Pokémon Ash ever owned. While the second year of Sun & Moon had several issues, none are as glaring as Poipole being the major Pokémon of the period, only to not actually do much of actually important. Starting with the fact that Ash only bonds with Poipole by proxy to begin with since Poipole interacts with and loves Pikachu before Ash even actually enters the picture, Poipole's biggest contributions to the series afterwards are acting silly for the majority of episodes and never actually getting involved in serious fights beyond one small bout with the Team Skull trio (which is estabilished as even more pathetic than the Team Rocket trio), making the fact that Ash captured him feel like a waste, especially when his focus episodes dealing more with his emotional side end up being just two, and ultimately not doing much of helpful during the Necrozma arc except leaving at the end in what at the time felt like a rather permanent farewell (as he was stuck in another dimension rather than somewhere Ash can readily access). Now, if Poipole's story ended there, he would've been odd but not too bad all things considered, but the problem comes from the fact that Poipole eventually returned right at the end of the series for no adequately explained in-universe reason during an unrelated Guzzlord attack, not only evolved but also presented as a competent and useful battler in spite of the fact none of it happened either onscreen or by Ash's efforts (unlike how Gliscor and Goodra, Pokémon in similar situations, did prove their worth onscreen before being put aside for a time), making this turn come across as an undeserved boost for Ash just so he could have six Pokémon, alongside removing the beauty of the permanent farewell Ash had with Poipole because the sheer coincidence of Naganadel's arrival and then his departure means that they may as well see each other again in the future. Among Ash's Pokémon in Alola, Naganadel is probably the crowning example of the series wanting its cake and eat it too in terms of wanting to be cute and fun and then rushing to make battles matter without the required buildup.

Meltan shares a lot of issues with Poipole, but overall to a lesser degree, mostly because his biggest problem is just coming way too late in the series and, much like Poipole, he only really bonds with Ash by proxy due to starting to like Rowlet first. Much like Lycanroc, his existence is supposedly important as a new discovery but this trait of his is barely called to attention, and coming too late in the series he only gets a few battles to his name with his contributions mostly amounting to gags rather than skill and serious fighting, alongside having the dubious honor of being the only Pokémon of Ash's Alola team to never use Z-Moves in spite of Ash fetching a Steelium-Z as a result of his final Grand Trial for no other reason than the out-of-universe one that Melmetal has never been in a game where you could use Z-Moves. Adding to the fact that Meltan only evolved right before the League finals for reasons outside Ash's guidance or influence conveniently before the last match for the victory, only to give indirect help at best and then winning a battle against a Pokémon with no feats, it's hard to consider Meltan's power boost earned and even harder to tell if he even had a significant power boost to begin with considering how little feats we have for both him in particular and Alola battles in general. All in all, a Pokémon that's been more shortserved by how late he came than actually any inherent issues.

2.3) Ash, Pikachu, and the Team Rocket trio

And with all those characters breached, we have to move on to the Sun & Moon take on Ash himself, which is, to put it simply, rather complicated to discuss. Another one of Sun & Moon's biggest talking points was the decision to amp up Ash's typical childishness to higher degrees than usual, with even his voice actress Rica Matsumoto confirming in an interview for the next series that she was explicitly instructed to play Ash as younger than usual for the Alolan series. Now, yet again, Ash having a goofier and more relaxed personality is neither unprecedented (as he was always silly to a degree, even in XY) nor inherently bad, and the problems mostly came from how the series decided to handle him later. One good thing at the start was that the take this series seemed to go for was Ash being a battle shonen-esque hero stuck in the wrong genre, with his typical behavior clashing with the more relaxed nature of the setting, which actually worked well in ensuring he didn't feel reset while fitting the new mission statement of the series. The problems really came up with how, ultimately, Ash became the series' biggest target of butt monkey-related humor (with the rest of the cast either being treated far more seriously or only occasionally being given the same treatment) and his initial competence in battling lead the way to an overabundance of 'silly regular kid'-related humor with even battles treated as mostly laughing matters, something later battles and important matches overturned to a degree that started to make Ash's handling feel arbitrary.

And arbitrary is the best way to describe Ash in this series: he can either be as good a trainer and master planner as he always was (Ash VS Olivia, Ash VS Misty, Ash VS Kukui), a heroic young man willing to go to good lengths for people he cares for (Tapu Koko rematch, most of the Guzzlord arc) while being scared and intimidated by his own Pokémon (Ula'Ula arc), a regular kid screwing up on daily tasks and willing to cheat his homework (Sophocles' early focus eps, the open school episode), a whiny little kid (the Stoutland treasure hunt episode, the Rotom farewell episode), a surprisingly thoughtful and serious boy (Stoutland's death episode, Minior episode) and everything in between, with the changes being so jarring that it feels less like this show is attempting a nuanced take on Ash and more like the show is simply not caring to stick to any portrayal depending on what the episode requires, especially when as I said above the entire premise of the show hinges on Ash not falling for his typical wanderlust (which is the inability to sit still for long and explore the world, so 'school and daily life adventures' doesn't cut it) without ever adequately explaining how, and seeming strangely uninterested in looking for new chances to grow stronger unless they happen to come his way. Arbitrary is also a great way to describe his impact on both his friends and the region, where in spite of appearing in every single episode, it often feels like Ash is irrelevant to his own show: he has nothing to do with either of Lillie's family deals, nor Sophocles' growing independency beyond occasional sidelines support and kickstarting it indirectly with the Charjabug gift, he barely did anything to support Lana's achievements beyond being there when they happened, his rivalry with Kiawe was nice but ultimately wasn't given his due, and Mallow and him barely got to have significant interactions throughout the story. Most of his rivalries in the region were carried more by his Pokémon than himself as he only shared amicable relationships with all of his supposed rivals with no real competitivity at their core (aside from Kiawe, which as mentioned was done dirty), and even when he got to be a hero it was either as part of an effort by everyone (Necrozma arc, both Guzzlord instances, technically most Ultra Guardians episodes), relying on questionably justified plot devices (Aether arc, and once again the Necrozma arc), or ultimately moving the focus away from him and his influence when you'd think the story would do the opposite (Guzma's parts in the Alola League). Adding onto that that the amount of times his Pokémon gained moves in the heat of the moment without training (a series staple that previous series tried to downplay with more onscreen training) and how his Pokémon ended up learning moves more for the actions of someone other than him than because he helped them, and Ash's handling in this region really adds up to strangely inconsequential, which is particularly bad considering how the League tried to go the other way, making his eventual achievement at the end feel hollow in the face of lacking buildup in the region and the several boosts and narrative aids he got to get there.

There's also the elephant in the living room that is Ash's development. Early in Sun & Moon I've seen people claim this series was more about Ash developing as a human being than as a trainer, which would be true... if not for the fact stuff like Ash doing chores was also alluded to and shown in previous series like AG and DP, and that during the Alola League (which should be the culmination of the series) none of it is actually remotely involved except for Ash talking of his love for the region during the final attack, while it never actually showed in previous matches (even against Guzma, which should be where this should come up given Ash's declaration at the start of it, the narrative wants us to stay in Guzma's head instead). The 'love for the region' thing also seems weird to bring up to me considering he actually spent less time exploring the region and more being holed up in one city with very occasional detours, with most of the plots ensuing around him being the sort of thing you'd see in "filler" episodes (like taking part in some competitions, taking part in a play, etc). It feels more like the series wants us to pretend the typical filler hijinks now are part of character growth rather than being just small adventures for fun. If we consider that learning to love the region, then Ash didn't really do much of different from previous series beyond sitting still this time around. And ultimately, the fact that Ash is back to adventuring now in a similar way to previous series means that if Ash ends up winning a League again in the future (which is not unlikely now that the ceiling was broken through), none of the reasons given to make his stay in Alola significant would really age well. The only arc that I feel actively tried to develop Ash as a trainer was Ula'Ula, and that still relied on some very significant moments of out-of-character behavior from Ash.

2.4) Relationships, and Everyone Else

I think at this point one recurring issue has cropped up: specifically, there are so many supposedly important characters that none of them truly got their due in terms of focus, either having to be satisfied with a number of focus episodes that barely amount to an arc or with their involvement into things reduced to just their specific deals and barely little else, especially with how this was the first series to not have all of Ash's friends necessarily involved in every episode. I feel this had a pretty adverse effect on the series' dynamics, as the already diluted interactions between the cast due to the large group ended up being even less focused on given that not all the characters were always there. As a result, we barely know stuff like Mallow's or Sophocles' relationship, or Lillie's and Kiawe's, and so on, with their own relationships to each other mostly falling into basic friendship (the ones with Ash in particular mostly falling into respect, friendliness and occasional snark at his expense), with only a few like Kiawe's competitiveness with Ash or Lana and Mallow being revealed halfway in as childhood friends having particular focus, otherwise being content with splitting the cast into 'the boys' group' and 'the girls' group' whenever they needed focused attention, and the rare occasions where the characters had some interactions. For the most part, perhaps emblematically of this series, characters mostly shared moments rather than actual relationships.

All that's left to discuss in this area is the rest of the cast, and let it be said... for a series supposedly about exploring the people of Alola, the majority of the non-main cast ranges from forgettable to rather dull, especially once we move to the lesser recurring characters. Lusamine's reduction to an overworked mother who only gets involved in matters explicitly tied to her children and occasionally the Ultra Guardians missions was a rather noticeable waste of an interesting game character, and while Kukui does have a nice presence and good usage throughout the series, the same can't quite be said of his wife Burnet, who beyond some good presence in the Aether arc and minor bits of exposition when dealing with Ultra Beasts (and in particular Necrozma) is effectively sidelined in housewife position for most of the series as Ash's 'second mother' (a position that, unlike Kukui who actively acts the part, mostly seems to come from cooking for him and being married post-Aether) with most of her funny moments coming from being a Royal Mask fangirl. Wicke has very little going for her, while Faba is probably one of Sun & Moon's worst misfires in that, after making his villainy far worse than his game self, the story acts like he should be forgiven while never actually learning his lesson, in spite of the show telling us he caused trauma to Lillie for years and how most of his contributions to anything end up boiling to minor help at best, and attempting to cheat his way to what he wants (the League) at worst. It's a horrible lessons for kids to have, and I'm not sure what the writers had in mind with this aside from keeping him around because the games' more snively and heinous Faba (even accounting for his more evil USUM iteration) also did.

Then we have the Kahuna, which are for the most part okay bit characters (even if Olivia's take was pretty weird, coming from her game self), with Nanu as the obvious standout even between the issues of the Ula'Ula arc as a jerk trainer with a point that doesn't really get 'taught his place', close enough to his game characterization, and Hapu having a decent track to development in the Poni arc (even if much like Olivia, it sacrificed her game characterization along the way). The other Trial Captains not part of the main cast run the gamut between nice to see but not particularly deep (Acerola, to a degree Ilima) and pretty much borderline pointless (Mina). Ash's rivals are a similar deal, with Hau being nice but having not too much to himself with how late he enters the series, while Gladion is an alright character whose rivalry with Ash mostly suffers of being a tad vanilla: they're on friendly terms, are strong, and like to battle each other, but beyond that Ash doesn't have much of a reason to be a rival (something even Alain had by being interested in facing Ash even if he was as separate otherwise), like the student-teacher relationship Sawyer had, or the foil status Paul shared with him, or simply being an old friend he wanted to surpass the way Gary was. Their lack of connection alongside the fact that Gladion would barely think about him unless the plot required him to only contributed to them feeling a tad distant from each other, and why their final bout at the League felt for many viewers just 'okay' rather than the earned culmination of their relationship.

And then there are the lower tier recurring characters, ostensibly Sun & Moon's selling point as, unlike previous series, only rarely did the series happen to introduce 'characters of the day' that never came back afterwards. The biggest problem is that, ultimately, all of these lower tier characters are still as flat as the characters of the day of yesteryear: in spite of appearing several times, all we know of Anela the old lady is that she used to be a dancer and likes Litten/Torracat a lot, Ulu is pretty much an even more flanderized Brock that seldom pops up, Anna the reporter mostly stuck to that role, most of the parents and relative of the classmates that weren't Lillie's remained minor characters with little of note to themselves, and so on. The only noticeable recurring guys among the bunch are probably the Skull trio (which mostly acted as a second rate Team Rocket while was even less recurring than they were in this region) and Viren as a recurring antagonist, mostly for being the kind of villain you usually saw punished at the end of the series in previous series (like Dolan the Pokémon merchant) except made recurring in spite of being arrested in his previous appearence, with no real explanation beyond 'kids' show logic'. Even supposedly important characters like Ida and Horatio mostly remain rather regular mentors and rivals with not much else to them, and are unlikely to stick to anyone but the most diehard fans. There are of course some good characters among this bunch, especially the borderline characters of the day like two-episode-wonders Dia and the Kanto weaboos in the Malie City arc, but overall, if Alola truly wanted to make this a lived in and more developed region than previous series, its inhabitants didn't give this aim any real favors, in my opinion.

3. A Dissection of the Series: What Went Wrong, How, and Why

With the biggest parts of important elements of the series analyzed, I'd like to use this final part of the review for some extra analysis of how the series went down and why, in my opinion, it ended up changing for the worse as it went along, since there's one important thing to point out: Sun & Moon, conceptually and fundamentally, wasn't a bad series. But what it does have is, beyond some big flaws, several small ones that continously added up.

Now, let's start to dissect everything, dividing everything by their year of airing.

3.1) Year One: Beginnings, Akala Island, Aether Foundation

When I say that, I have to start with saying that my opinion of Sun & Moon wasn't initially this negative, and in fact, the first twenty-to-forty episodes were actually pretty nice: while the setup is slightly different than usual and humor is definitely prevalent (in particular the oft-mentioned 'funny faces', which would go on to become one of the defining elements of this iteration, far more than any prior series), there's a steady influx of plot-important episodes, development and setup for the future to help making the series a breezy watch, with each slice of life romp feeling either productive or simply fun diversions. Among the good things estabilished here that stand out as good even at the end of the series there's definitely the spiritual angle of Alola, an angle that whenever explored truly does make the region feel different than previous ones and like Ash is effectively experiencing something he never did before, and with stuff like the first trial and Grand Trial alongside Litten's capture arc and Gladion's introduction help keeping ther pace going even in the absence of a more overarching goal in the League. Now, this stretch is hardly perfect, considering that it already shows several cracks that later expanded: Ash only decides to move to the Island Challenge when he happens to remember about it in episode 9; a lot of battles end way too quick and barely get focus except for Trial and Grand Trial (which still have a somewhat lethargic pace); Gladion's decent rival setup is ruined by an unnecessary Team Rocket attack; some Idiot Plots and empty episodes that are just dull to watch happen; certain setups and developments are rushed to the finish way too fast; and, most importantly, the removal of Trial Captains from the lore and Team Skull as a consistent presence beyond occasional moments ended up removing tentpole parts of Alola's nature in the games that the show barely fills adequately, and it opens the door to call anything the show wants a trial, no matter how unrelated to battling it is, giving a feeling that the Island Challenge is hapzardly put together. But, during these early episodes, the problems are negligible or made up for, and even nowadays, I'd heartily reccomend everything up to Stoutland's death as legitimately good.

The first crack, overall, comes from the Akala arc. At the time of its airing, it looked to be a breath of fresh air as it finally moved away from Melemele Island after a rather noticeable dip in plot important events for more filler-y hijinks, and due to prior experience with the series, it was easy to assume the cast would've remained there for a while. However, that didn't end up happening, the arc ending mere episodes after it began, after rushing through equivalents of the three in-game trials (with Ash only effectively taking part in the Grass Trial from the games while Kiawe and Lana ended up gaining his Marowak and her Z-Ring and Waterium-Z instead) until it culminated in Olivia's Grand Trial, with one extra episode dealing with evolution-related issues for Lycanroc culminating into Dusk Lycanroc. This arc already started on a bad note by only allowing Ash one of the in-game trials for a Z-Crystal, which while to a degree understandable on the reasoning of wanting him to only have Z-Crystals he'd effectively use and the seeming decision at the time to not have overlapping Z-Crystals among the main cast, ended up solidifying the 'whatever counts' feeling of the Anime Island Challenge, and a first proper episode that seemed to relish into making Ash into an even larger butt monkey than usual, including him crying like a baby upon losing in a way that would've been immature for his OS self. Kiawe's episode was the standout of this batch, as it focused on him confronting an opponent he couldn't beat and with Ash giving him support into improving, estabilishing a good challenge to overcome in a way that had become rare for the series and was good to see again. Lana's own Trial wasn't bad either, but suffered of having more challenge put into it during the fishing part than the battling part, and Ash's Grass Trial being a battle that suffered of both misplaced comedy (an example of tone imbalance I'll address more later) and an opponent that barely even moved in Totem Lurantis. Olivia's Grand Trial was also probably one of the best battles to come out of Sun & Moon, putting a focus on strategy even in an extremely slow battle and with a more-than-decent finish, with the only blemish being that Rockruff's signs of evolving only really come one episode before they develop further into him evolving, and the already-mentioned problem of Dusk Lycanroc being supposedly a new discovery that nobody paid much attention to, after which we moved back to Melemele to resume the rhythm of seeming slice of life (with at least three episodes of good importance and one nominally important).

After another brief stretch, we moved briefly to Kanto for an arc that was ultimately just nostalgic fluff for old fans bringing back Misty and Brock, which was nice even if transparently OS-pandering (to the point Misty's Azurill and even Tracey were not even as much as mentioned during the episodes), with the only really important contributions to the series beyond two cool fights in the second episode was the first mention of the Alola Pokémon League (with Kukui being reminded he'll need badges, something he seemed to not pay much attention to later) and Misty and Brock getting a promise of a visit to Alola that didn't really do much for the series beyond further fluff. After this, however, we finally moved to one of the first truly major arcs of the series: the Aether Foundation arc, or, in my opinion, where the series really started to fall apart.

At first, the arrival of the Aether arc seemed to be rather promising, seemingly keeping the slice of life nature of the series but starting to delve into the elements of the games for what people presumed to be a slow burn to a payoff loosely covering the game events. Except... that's not really what happened. Instead, this entire arc turned into about a dozen of episodes harshly abridging the entire villain arc of the games and cutting everything they couldn't fit, while seemingly following the conflicting mission statements of making the arc as loosely close to the games as possible while trying to be as different from them as possible, and this was clear from the very beginning, with the introduction of Lusamine as an overbearing mother with none of the deviousness of her game counterpart. This, however, isn't necessarily a problem as the Anime has often rewritten game characters before, but what the problem is is the fact they changed the conflict of Lillie dealing with the emotional abuse Lusamine inflicted upon her into Lillie simply being annoyed at being treated as a child and, most importantly, being annoyed at how her mother evolved her own Clefairy, something Clefairy itself didn't have a problem with, that makes her come across as a spoiled brat and losing most sympathy (especially when no one but maybe Burnet reprimand her for her callous behavior), especially when Lusamine is treated as legitimately loving her and just being too busy rather than having any malice. The problem is also that, throughout the arc, the only one blaming Lusamine for never wondering how did Lillie develop her phobia of Pokémon is Gladion, while true to form Lillie doesn't seem to hold her mother accountable for it, and in fact, only wants to uncover the truth after Nebby teleports her near Type: Null by sheer coincidence, reverting her development from her focus episodes. Nebby is another big issue, as its ownership moved from Lillie to Ash for no reason other than giving him a reason to be involved in what would've otherwise been 'the Aether family show', yet the episode wants to still play into the game by implying Lillie and Nebby have a special relationship when they share their moment.

What I feel was the biggest issue of this specific arc, however, was shuffling the actively villainous role of the plot towards Faba, where he actually manages to be menacing for a brief while before the show decides to fully portray him as a silly villain hard to take seriously (including a magical girl routine to activate an Ultra Wormhole-creating machine) even as he's responsible for Lillie's trauma in his attempt to make Lusamine happy and finding an Ultra Beast for her and tried to wipe out Lillie's memories when she seemed to be able to reveal what happened. In the midst of a sea of confusing plot holes by adaptation (why was Type: Null fitted with the mask when as Silvally he did exactly what he was asked to do and Lusamine seems unaware it even exists? Where did the RKS System ROMs come from? Why the heck did a random Solgaleo and Lunala entrust their child to Ash to begin with?), the biggest problem of this arc comes from how, in Faba's aborted attempt to wipe out Lillie's memories, Silvally's attempt to save her reminds her of what really happened when she developed her phobia (a mere two episodes after it was revealed what caused it), giving her back the ability to touch all Pokémon again, making her previous attempts to do so feel retroactively pointless and only there to milk viewer sympathy for when she lost the ability to again, alongside ensuring to keep her development path directionless after this episode barely one third of the way into the series.

The biggest problem after this, however, comes from Faba's subsequent plan that ends up with Lusamine defending her children from a Nihilego and ending up dragged into Ultra Space due to her act of selflessness, with Lillie, Gladion, and subsequently everyone else moving on to Poni Island to rescue her. Along the way, Lillie changes into what the games called her 'Z-Powered Form', which in the games symbolized her moving away from her mother's shadow, while here it means... pretty much nothing, voiding it of its significance and making it come across as either a game-pandering move or something just done because the source material did it. Another significant issue of this stretch is Ash's upgrade of his Z-Ring into a Z-Power Ring, under the absolutely important reasoning of his Solgalium-Z not fitting in his regular Z-Ring. Meaning that Ash needed a magical, seemingly important ritual to obtain something whose usefulness boils down to borderline cosmetic reasons, especially as we later see Z-Power Rings doled out regularly like they're nothing important (including one to Team Rocket and Gladion's regular Z-Ring turning into a Z-Power Ring with no one remarking about it), which is probably one of the most blatant cases of marketing dictating plot flow in the history of this series.

We then moved on to the final battle, which was admittedly decent enough beyond some strange issues of power creep (like Sophocles one-shotting Lusamine's Milotic) and some occasional bits of tonal imbalance (Teether Dance hula in the middle of a serious mission by Sophocles, Mallow and Lana), but was marred by two issues of significance: one was the decision of having Lillie's big moment with her mother possessed by Nihilego involve her giving a speech of how she hates her and how she allowed herself to be possessed by an Ultra Beast for how self-absorbed she is, which while definitely meant to come across as "the mother I respect would never fall for it" has the problem of Lillie and Lusamine never getting a softer reconciliation before this moment (with said softer reconciliation seemingly happening offscreen after everything was over, which we never heard of until almost episode one hundred), which just further makes Lillie unlikable. The other problem is the grand debut of 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt, a move that was only used three times that was either poorly explained or never actually received an explanation depending on how you interpret the part where it's employed in the very last major battle of the series, completely out of nowhere except for perhaps Ash's Electrium-Z shining briefly a lot of episodes ago, which was never fully explained, as is the fact Ash's Pikashunium-Z reverted after use.

And thus, after a wedding between the four-times-dated Kukui and Burnet and with Nebby deciding to leave for no adequately explained reason, with Lusamine estabilishing a task force for Ultra Beasts which involves the classmates and Lillie in the closest thing this series gave them to an onscreen reconciliation, after an arc where Lillie supposedly grew... things returned to be for the most part exactly like they were in previous episodes, almost like this arc never happened, including Lillie reverting to her regular clothes. Pretty much, this supposedly character-focused arc ended up coming across as ultimately not so important, especially when Lillie's personality remained roughly the same with the only real problems she developed from being the ones this arc itself introduced, except for now being able to touch every Pokémon.

Things seemed to just return to normal, even if this was just a prelude towards the structure of the series completely collapsing on itself.

3.2) Year Two: Ultra Guardians, Ula'Ula Island, Necrozma

Year two is the one to which I, personally, trace most of the problems of the Sun & Moon series, as the major focus of the series throughout this period ended up being the 'Ultra Guardians', a Sentai-esque team formed by the main cast under Aether Foundation supervision tasked with dealing with Ultra Beasts, and the biggest problem of this arc is that it really wasn't an arc so much as it was a loose connection of monster of the weeks plots that occasionally was brought up outside of them, but was otherwise completely separate from everything not just in terms of structure, but also in tone, as a parody Sentai with barely threatening monsters clashed heavily both with wanting to be a chill slice of life Anime and with wanting to be a battle-based Pokémon Anime. It's an arc that never fully gelled with everything else (the only I'd save being Celesteela, a good Sophocles episode and a rare character-driven Ultra Guardians romp) and ultimately ended on a pitiful note with a rather dull episode with no real oomph to it, but ended up taking the 'main arc' position and leaving the rest of the series pretty much directionless, with several major arcs stalled and, beyond Lillie obtaining her Icium-Z and an Ice Stone that then disappeared completely, Torracat and Steenee evolving, and the Ula'Ula arc for Lycanroc, and Poipole leading to Necrozma, pretty much little of major happened. Teams remained frozen, and development seemed to hit a dead end, beyond officially introducing the Masked Royal.

Between the Ilima episodes (which felt like a waste considering his main purpose at the League ended up being effectively jobbing to Guzma) and the beginning of the Ula'Ula arc proper, the viewers and the students were properly acquainted with the idea of Alola soon getting a Pokémon League, with both Ash and Kiawe expressing interest in it. This didn't send any weird looks yet, as Kiawe was estabilished as the other major battler and to have taken the trials, but this was in hindsight an important omen of things to come. In the meantime, however, Ash departed for Ula'Ula in what turned out to be a solo arc, and one that started up promising only to run into big issues along the way.

I already mentioned part of it when talking of Lycanroc, but the problem of the Ula'Ula arc is that it works on the assumption that Ash would be scared of Lycanroc's rage issues to the point of not acting, with Tapu Bulu's training giving them a moment to surpass those issues that, even with Rowlet suddenly learning Razor Leaf by sitting on a magical tree, could've even worked if it wasn't for the fact that to calm down Lycanroc and reaffirm his trust in him Ash ended up involving a flashback to Rockruff that we never saw before, making the whole affair come across as insincere. After an interlude where Ash undertook a 'Trial' that was technically the in-game Ghost one but was effectively a phony one involving Team Rocket (just furthering the 'whatever goes' sense of the Anime Island Challenge) that resulted in no Z-Crystal, the debut Electroweb, and a strange appearence of 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt again in spite of the whole thing being a relatively down to earth affair even with Team Rocket about to win with Mimikyu's Z-Move, this arc reached its conclusion with Ash VS Nanu, a battle that's been in equal part praised and mocked, and which I had a friend describe in the most accurate way as a well-written and interesting battle... for anyone but Ash Ketchum.

Seeing a battle taking on a more psychological bent with Nanu toying with Ash and trying to force him to give in to Lycanroc's rage mode is an admitedly interesting choice and Nanu is absolutely the best part of this battle for it, but the problem is that this requires the assumption that Ash would unconsciously not trust his Pokémon after they put the rage mode under control with trust to begin with, alongside the battle being rather visually boring and with a 1 VS 3 set up that makes it more seem like Nanu is weak than Ash being strong (especially with Tapu Bulu tossing in a Sitrus Berry mid-match). This is supposed to be Ash's big development moment as a trainer in Alola, but it requires Ash to have a regressive mindset that doesn't fit how far he's come (something Sun & Moon does in quite a few things big and small, like completely forgetting Jennies and Joys are families of clones after the Kanto episodes) and, much like the Aether arc before it, begins and ends in the few episodes it takes to happen, I already covered Poipole's issue in his character dissection, so I'd like to move on to the most important part of this year: the Necrozma arc, which among the major arcs of the Sun & Moon series it's probably the most irrelevant. Coming in after only minimal foreshadowing (including a fairly interesting hint of a connection between Nanu and Giovanni that the show never really dealt with adequately), this arc was effectively as standalone as it gets, involving events that were only briefly mentioned after it (Rotom depositing the data of Necrozma in the Stufful episode, Naganadel's return, the stadium where the League was held being called Manalo Stadium), and that tried to make a big dangerous deal without actually having much happening: beyond the biggest damage of the episode being adults feeling comedically down as a result of absorbed energy, the introduction of an Elite squad of Team Rocket led by Giovanni's secretary Matori (here revamped as a Team Rocket trio hater in spite of originally being the one reccomending them to Giovanni in DP's last episode) that ultimately did nothing significant except maybe causing injuries to Nebby that wasn't clear if they happened or not with how stiff the animation was, the baffling and unexplained return of Nebby alongside an out-of-nowhere Lunala, and a general sense of big deal where nothing much of dangerous for the cast happened (and that bafflingly replaced the Ultra Recon Squad and Ultra Megalopolis with a talking Naganadel and a generic quarry that achieved effectively the same purpose), this arc ended up feeling like a snoozefest that only resulted in Poipole staying behind in his now healed world in an overall beautifully permanent-feeling farewell, except that, in the light of future events, this choice felt like one that effectively harmed the show in the long run. Also, with Matsui being the headwriter, one might think resolving the arc with everyone sharing their energy borders on self-plagiarism considering she was also the headwriter of Dragon Ball GT, which had a similar climax (itself inherited from Dragon Ball Z).

Thankfully, even if this year was really not the greatest, the following one brought as much improvements as it did other problems to deal with.

3.3) Year Three: Poni Island, Hints of Mohn, Alola Pokémon League

The third year of Sun & Moon did not start on a good note, as after the Necrozma arc the show ended up on a shortage of things to look forward to, with several arcs still stalled and only the still no show Guzma and the League left to check out. During this period, perhaps to lead into Let's Go marketing, we started getting some shorts at the end of each episode dealing with an Eevee getting to Alola, which everyone assumed would eventually go to Ash, only to unexpectedly go to Lana in a move that made some fans sour. Sandy didn't end up doing much else but being cute and possibly allowing Lana's arc to resume by giving her another cute Pokémon to hold in Popplio's stead, but that was it for a while alongside Hau's debut as a character, in an episode infamous for being at the same time an okay rival introduction where Ash lost a fight by fetching his Z-Crystal and getting distracted to take it back, and where Rowlet ate an Everstone for a move that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.

Beyond Misty and Brock visiting an Alola (which involved an episode where Brock's womanizing gag was blown even further than ever before) and an actually pretty decent arc starring Ash tossed into a post-apocalyptic alternate Alola to deal with Guzzlord in a rare instance of an Ultra Beast being presented as an actual force of destruction, the show finally started to move again with the Poni arc, or as some people called it 'the ultimate development arc', as the focus of this arc seemed to be the opposite of Ula'Ula being an Ash solo act by putting the focus back on the neglected companions, giving them either a new character direction, Z-Crystals evolutions, new Pokémon or in Ash's case his final Grand Trial, all tied together by Hapu opening up to the crew after starting standoffish and distant. Overall, Poni isn't on paper a bad arc, and there are quite a few episodes that are actually pretty good (Kiawe's trial among them for sure), but cramming all this development on the same island one after the other only had the effect of feeling jarring (unlike how Akala was not only still early enough, but only gave significant new things to Ash, Kiawe and Lana), most noticeably by cramming two completely separate evolution plots in the same episode in a move that slightly hurt both of them (Sophocles' feeling a tad impersonal, while Lana's lost the actual training part of it), Shaymin was effectively even more irrelevant than Sandy in the series, the Mohn arc estabilished here had some problems I'll get into soon, and the Hapu Grand Trial ending up as one of the worst 'Gym battles'-like matches Ash ever fought by utilizing the same strategy to victory as the extremely derided Brock battle by dousing Mudsdale and using an Electric attack on it, only adding the patch that 'it was just like Soak' even if no Pikachu can access that move. Ultimately, a well-intentioned arc that felt a bit too little, too late, and came at the expense of Ash's own focus before his final Grand Trial (to the point unlike the previous islands he didn't even do any unofficial trials before this one).

Following this, the next major episode (excluding a two-parter introducing Ash's Meltan that arguably ran one episode too long) was one that was both long awaited and caused some issues and improvements for the series going forward: Guzma's debut episode, alongside the formal announcement to the world of the Alola Pokémon League... and more specifically, the fact that it would be open to everyone with no requirements whatsoever, on the justification that it's not important who wins. Now, I've seen way too many debates on the topic, so I'll put it simply: regardless of if you think an open League is a good idea or not, it does mean that the various trials and Grand Trials Ash took on lost a lot of their meaning since they became self-sustained achievements that don't mean much outside their bubble if Ash didn't need to do any of them to enter the League, and this structure did cause several problems that lowered the general quality of the Alola League for a decent part of its length. When Guzma is being painted as the bad guy for considering the League just a schoolyard fight between weaklings, the viewers shouldn't be inclined to agree with him.

Another big issue of this decision is that, otherwise, it caused the structure of the series to come under scrutiny: before, and usually, since Ash is the only character taking part in the League, it's only his growth in skill that is under scrutiny, and everyone else is free to be as strong or as weak as necessary, but opening the door to everyone to join in also meant that everyone in the series came under scrutiny, and to put it simply characters like Mallow just weren't made to be involved in it even under the guise of a League for fun, something that showed in the actual execution of the Alola League and that I'll get to in a bit.

The episode after this one started the further estabilishment of the Mohn arc, and let me just say... this arc is, on the whole, probably the most disappointing of the various arcs of Sun & Moon, and that's saying something after everything I explained so far. Specifically, the biggest purpose of this arc was for the Aether family to find out about the whereabouts of the seemingly dead patriarch of the family, and supposedly show Lillie as being 'strong' after the events of the Aether arc, but in actual concept, it was just a convenient way for her to get a Z-Ring after conveniently ignoring the possibility for almost one real life year, getting it 'on loan' for almost getting a Z-Move to work in spite of everyone else requiring to pass a real trial to get theirs, and with her contributions effectively ending up still needing Gladion's help and amounting, once more, mostly to feeling sad to catch audience sympathy, while Gladion gets a Zoroark to be only used in one round of the League. But the worst part of all is that this arc, to put it simply, doesn't end. After Magearna finally wakes up and we get the not explained reveal that it knows where Mohn is, the Aether family embarks on a journey to find him... only for the series to end at that point. After spending six months teasing this storyline, just leaving it hanging like this is poor storytelling, and even with the justification that Pokémon 2019's world-hopping premise would mean the new show can end it for Sun & Moon, the series shouldn't have to rely on another one to resolve its own plots, especially one on which supposedly significant moments of the late series hinged on.

The rest of the series, however, does gain something from the open League premise, and that something is a consistent direction by having everyone get boosts in preparation for the League, which at the very least leads to some alright moments for Sophocles that play nicely in his arc and the technical resolution of Lana's arc, among a sea of strangely persistent legendary appearences that only got more and more contrived as the series went on considering they were entirely separate from each other, even the ones that led to ultimately good episodes (like the one where a Celebi led to Ash and Torracat meeting a young Professor Kukui), since it felt like a move to ensure attention that was wholly unnecessary to the story being told. But over time, everything came to a close with the start of the Alola Pokémon League, probably the most talked about arc of Sun & Moon, for good or ill.

The Alola League is unique in several aspects, both in terms of the Sun & Moon series and the Anime as a whole: for the former, it's a battle-focused arc in a region that didn't want battling to be the focus as the climax of it; for the latter, it's the longest League arc in the series' history. clocking at roughly sixteen episodes. Being a tournament arc, you'd think such a good length would benefit it, but the way the series decided to execute things left a lot to be desired, most specifically because Sun & Moon has a very mixed track record in terms of battles and for the decision to show every battle of the tournament even if just partially. There is a lot that could be said about this arc, but I'll try to aim for the big ones first: for starters, beginning the League by reducing the contestants to just sixteen using a Battle Royale was a rather poor choice, as not only that's a format that allows characters to reach high positions by just surviving rather than being strong (as seen by how James got to the Top 16 even if he explicitly didn't face anyone), but confining it to just one episode meant that pretty much every battle of it was reduced to just a series of one-hit KOs from every major characters, with all of them ultimately surviving. After that, another problem was how a lot of the early rounds of the arc ended up averaging between okay to poor battles, with the dubious honor of having Ash's first battle being completely for laughs against Faba, the only character beyond Jessie and James to get one in this League in spite of being the eventual winner. I already mentioned the specifics of Mallow's attempt to quit her match coming out of nowhere from a character standpoint and the issues of Ash VS Hau, so I'll just say that Lillie's battle against Gladion was okay but done dirty for what was supposed to be a huge moment for her in terms of development, and that Sophocles', Lana's (sans Mallow's) and Kiawe's battles ended up being okay to great on the whole. However, the fact that the first two rounds of the League only used one Pokémon each didn't help the sense of escalation at all, nor the sense of Guzma being correct in describing this League as 'a schoolyard fight between weaklings'.

From the Semifinals onward, the League improves in quality due to only good battlers remaining, though it does run into problems of a different sort: Guzma, which was built up as the major threat of the League with Ash vowing to stop him due to what Alola did to him, is not only dealt with in the penultimate round rather than in the finals, but in a battle that makes that statement ring a tad hollow since the perspective we follow during the fight isn't Ash's, but rather Guzma's, shedding some light into his confidence issues and his Golisopod's habit to use Emergency Exit whenever scared (which beyond being only halfway foreshadowed, also ends up with the bad side-effect of giving Ash a free win through Torracat, turning Ash VS Guzma into a 2 VS 1 in Ash's favor), but effectively making Ash interchangeable as a result. It's a good fight with some nice moments, but it just makes his build up as possibly ruining the League for everyone ring hollow when his presence didn't seem to ruin the League for anyone in any way, and the threat wasn't even considered worthy of the finals. Kiawe VS Gladion, by contrast, is mostly a good fight with not much else to it. However, one thing that starts to be noticeable in this part of the League is the sheer reluctance of the show to start any matches before the halfway mark or close to it, padding the airtime as much as possible with not always necessary scenes and stretching the battles along two episodes even when not necessary.

The finals having three Pokémon each meant that Ash VS Gladion ended up having a bit more meat to it in terms of battling, but Ash once again ended up getting another boost in the form of Meltan's evolution into a supposedly powerful mythical Pokémon, which would already be bad since he shouldn't be getting these kinds of boosts at the very final stage of this story (and yes, just to be clear, Kingler's deal was poor writing back in OS as well) but also comes after a gag battle rigged in his favor, a battle that required several contrivancies on his side to be won with Rowlet, and another battle with a facilitated victory in Guzma, making it feel like Ash ended up getting into each of these matches with the writing rigged on his side. The Gladion battle has some fairly good moments both from a character and battling perspective, but between the unearned evolution right before it and just the way they built up to things, Ash's victory here ended up not really feeling as impressive as you'd think this first League Conference victory should be, all things considered. A battle that just ends up as 'okay' rather than the amazing it should've been.

However, after a somewhat dull interlude involving a Guzzlord attack that's probably comprised of more stock footage than action just so Naganadel can come in to make number, we moved on to Ash VS Kukui, probably one of the best battles of this series. That said, while it is pretty good and better written than the majority of them, especially in terms of how Torracat is handling for its first three episodes, it is knocked down by being an exhibition match, meaning that beyond 'fun' and offering a good fight, Ash doesn't need to win this battle (unlike how every other major battle at this stage usually comes with adequate stakes), and most importantly how Tapu Koko forced his way in in place of Kukui's last Pokémon (after Kukui allowed Naganadel in on the pretense of being part of the family, ignoring that three-to-four of Kukui's Pokémon in this match were never seen before and his supposed Pelipper was completely excluded just because the local deity wanted some fighting), which given how Koko wasn't part of this particular equation comes across as scrunching two battles to save time. It also doesn't help that then Tapu Koko interrupts the match again just to allow Kukui and Ash to use Z-Moves again, with Ash ending up using 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt for the final time while praising the region, which while making for a cool finisher it ultimately makes Ash's supposed aim to master Z-Moves to defeat Tapu Koko resolved in a poor way when he only won using the Z-Crystal he never actually trained to use and that only conveniently showed up whenever it needed. Accounting for yet another boost in the form of Naganadel's return, this battle is ultimately marred once again like most of the League by the writing apparently wanting him to win at all costs and look good while doing so, strategy and skill be damned along the way.

After this followed two episodes of closure, that had some good moments (especially in regards to the Team Rocket trio) but ultimately involved a lot of contrived instances (like an Ultra Wormhole for Naganadel to return home coming just above Kukui's house) or poorly executed moments, most importantly the completely offscreen adventure of Ash and Nebby in Ultra Space, the way Mimikyu decided to let go of his killer instinct towards Pikachu, and most importantly the fact that Ash decided to leave his Alolan team behind for reasons the viewer wasn't made privy to, and which ended up having negative implications for either the Alolan team or the previous Pokémon depending on how you read it.

And that's ultimately how Sun & Moon ended up feeling for me, with several small issues that kept adding up, until the show just couldn't handle them anymore.

3.4) The Problem of Themes and Other Technical Issues

Before to move on the closing statement, I'd like to quickly address something I've often seen brought up in Sun & Moon's defense, generally its themes justifying a lot of what it does alongside exploring the region of Alola by having Ash live there. Usually, the biggest themes I see brought up about this is that Sun & Moon is about family and meeting a world and learning from it... but while the first might have some merit, the second is very much what the show has always been about, arguably moreso than Sun & Moon has been since Ash actively travelled to meet said world rather than wait until the world came knocking at his door, and there were a lot of family-oriented moments in previous series, be they siblings or relatives. I'm sure there are other, different themes that one could bring up here, perhaps some that are indeed unique to the Sun & Moon series, but there's something important to say about themes: no matter how good the message you want to spread or explore is, if the narrative has issues, you can't excuse them on the pretense of themes, especially if it starts to be applied to every single imperfection one finds in a story. Themes are embellishments that make stories better, not substitutes for good writing.

And in terms of narrative issues, Sun & Moon has, in my opinion, quite a few of them, not just the ones I explained in the first paragraph but also some important ones involving both the way episodes are written, and how battles were handled, including the way the generational gimmicks were used. In regards the way the episodes are written, there's the fact that several of them end up involving a strange structure where the plot doesn't actually begin until the halfway mark, and while this may perhaps help with a slow pace and relaxed atmosphere, it does have the side effect of making quite a few of them feel dull to watch, especially older fans used to the rhythms of the series before this iteration.

Bigger, and most pressing, are the problems of battle writing this season ran into, which go deeper than just the absolute downgrade in battle presentation, but go straight into how the battles were written. One noticeable thing that feeds into how slow the battles ended up being is the fact that commentary became just as commonplace as it used to be in the earliest series, constantly breaking the action on a regular basis rather than letting the scenes flow more often than not. Beyond that, the biggest problem is that, more often than not, the battles aren't decided by skill or strategy (though there are occasional skill-based bouts), but rather who feels a bigger drive to win or happens to fire their Z-Move last, which coupled with the removal of most of the minor battles that could go either way to mostly focus on the big ones that have to absolutely be resolved a certain way, leading to such gems as the already mentioned battle with Hau where an otherwise good Ash ended up slipping his Z-Crystal just so he could be distracted and lose due to it, or one where Gladion managed to completely tank a Z-Move only to reply by his own, out of nowhere new Dragon-type Z-Move. It made battles dull to follow more often than not, especially with battles often falling more on shows of strength or exchanges of moves with no real rhyme and reason rather than giving the impression that the trainers had any real plan behind their orders (Ash constantly falling back on relying on an incompletely learned move in Ash VS Hau being a particularly blatant case of it showing).

And relatedly, another major issue of the series overall is the way it choose to handle Z-Moves. Compared to Mega Evolution being a fairly consistent 'have the stones + have the bond = Mega Evolution' in the previous show, Z-Moves depend on several factors, from getting the pose right to having a correct amount of focus and bond with the Pokémon to if the Pokémon used them before, and as a result, the entire idea of mastering Z-Moves feels wholly inconsistent: sometimes you can have characters with perfect relationships with their Pokémon completely failing at using their Z-Moves, sometimes characters like Mallow that first chided others for not getting the Grassium-Z pose right and then ended up unable to master Bloom Doom well until the League match, sometimes you can have characters that get Z-Moves right with Pokémon they never even saw before, and everything in between. It feels extremely arbitrary, and makes 'mastering Z-Moves' feel less down to the characters' agency and more down to whether the writers feel like having them master them or not.

But, if I may say, the real biggest problem of the series is that, simply put, it often raises questions it never manages to answer satisfactorily, just creating a situations were things are left so vague everyone has to either remain confused at what happened or supplant it with their own headcanons. Counting just some of the important questions: Why did Ash choose to go to school instead of a typical journey? Why was Tapu Koko so interested in Ash? Why did Ash receive Nebby from that Solgaleo and Lunala? Why did Nebby leave at the end of his arc? Why do Giovanni and Nanu know each other so personally? Where did that Lunala come from? What's the deal with Dusk Lycanroc and Meltan? Why does the Pikashunium-Z manifest? Why did Naganadel return? Why does Magearna know Mohn's location?

I have no clue. And frankly, I'm not sure if Sun & Moon knows, either.

4. Conclusions

And with this, I reached the end of this long dissection. It probably got pretty ranty, and it may sound excessive considering this is all the result of overanalyzing what's ultimately a kids' show, but I think I covered most of everything I wanted to. So, in the end, with so much said, what are my final impressions of Sun & Moon? Well, I'd say the amount of fun you'll have with it will depend exactly from what you want of it.

In spite of all my critiques, I'm fairly aware of how people just looking for a good time to cheer themselves up with occasionally emotional moments will find definitely stuff to like. Less critical-minded viewers will also definitely find something for everyone in there, and perhaps enjoy what the series has to offer. My personal opinion is that, ultimately, at its best Sun & Moon can be one of the best entries of the Pokémon Anime, while at its worst, it can be even worse than entries like the Best Wishes series. And as someone who likes consistency in terms of what a series has to offer, I found Sun & Moon a quite irritating watch to do, and probably my second least favorite entry of the series even with its good moments.

Overall regardless of which opinion you will have ended this read in, I hope you found my thoughts interesting to read about, and whatever opinion you hold of the Sun & Moon series, I respect it, and, in case you enjoyed it more than I did, I'm glad you did.

As for me, I officially consider the Gen VII Anime a closed book. With the new series starting soon enough, I'm optimistic that things will only look up from there. Not just for me, but for every other watcher as well.

So, regardless of what the future may hold for this show, I'm looking forward to continue my journey reviewing it with all of you, hoping in better stories to be told.

[valkyrieelysia18]

RWBY Rewrite: The Jaundice Arc

Hey there everybody! Sorry it’s been awhile since you’ve heard from me, but I’ve got a job now and less of writing drive than I had when I was high school/college. Doesn’t mean it’s completely gone though and now I’m going to tackle the point that people started to really have problems with RWBY: the Jaundice Arc.

I know, big guns, but frankly I wanted to get this one. Partially because I want to do Jaune’s post eventually and I feel like I need to do this one before I can do that one, and partially because like I said before: this point where people really started to have problems with the show. And more specifically, this when people REALLY start to dislike Jaune.

Now, I’ve touched on my feelings on him before, but let me get this all out and over with. I don’t hate Jaune and I don’t think he’s an inherently bad character. Almost everyone on this show has been written badly and I think the absolutely simmering undercurrents that some parts of the RWDE community have for him is perhaps a little over the top. Personally, I think the core idea of his character is pretty good and he’s at his best in my opinion when he’s playing support to the other characters.

That being said, I completely understand why people dislike him. He has been constantly given focus away from the main team, which started in Volume 1 which was already short as it was to devote about a quarter of your episodes to a non main character in your first season. He also doesn’t suffer nearly as much for the consequences of his actions while the female characters get constant crap for theirs. I’m not even going to go into the Miles Luna Author Self Insert thing.

After having read fan fiction and seen some rewrite scenarios on Youtube, I personally think that Jaune can be written well so long as he’s not being written by Miles and Kerry. With that, I’m ready to take my crack at it.

Setup

As I said, Jaune took massive screen time away from the main characters since early on in the series. There’s an easy way to fix this. As I stated in an earlier post, I was going to spend the first volume/season focusing on Team RWBY aside from a small potential team up with Team JNPR. Jaune, and his other teammates, would mainly be relegated to comedy and background support for the main four girls after the Initiation. I’d throw in a few hints of what’s to come with them, but that’s it. Thus, I’d actually put the Jaundice Arc in the second volume/season which would be significantly larger than the first.

Because we’d be doing it then, we’d have bit more buildup for this story. Cardin’s bullying and enmity towards Jaune would be set up in the prior volume/season’s class interactions. As I noted in my School Rewrite, Jaune’s strategic abilities would also be showcased early on as well as Cardin’s tendency to go head on and brutal without realizing potential problems with that approach. Jaune’s relationship with Pyrrha and the rest of his team would also be better set up.

Now that the board is set, let’s get to it.

Student Days

The first thing I would absolutely change is making it clear that Jaune is actually trying. That was the thing that really did irk me with how Miles and Kerry wrote this arc, despite having gone through the effort of cheating his way into a huntsman academy, he then proceeds to goof off and put absolutely no effort into it. So, before and during this arc, it’ll be clearly shown he’s been studying like crazy and putting in extra time into the fighting simulations that are available for students. He’s not failing in terms of his regular studies, but he’s not top of the class either. In terms of physical combat, he’s the worst in his year, but he’s exceptional in Strategy and Tactics. This I think would be a good and reasonable place for Jaune starting out given his character and background prior to the series.

Thing is, this pisses Cardin off. He sees how much of a weakling Jaune is as a fighter and can see that he is so out of place at Beacon. Despite this, he’s paired with arguably the strongest person in their class who hangs on his every word and has (unintentionally) been showing him up as a leader during Strategy and Tactics. He knows something is off with Jaune, leading him to spy on him to figure out what’s up.

I wouldn’t change that much with him and Pyrrha’s interaction on the roof, I already briefed the reason why Pyrrha trusts him as a leader in her rewrite post. Maybe throw in a hint that his father really didn’t want Jaune to become a huntsman, but I’ll get into that when I get into his backstory proper.

I also wouldn’t change that much revolving in his talk with Cardin straight after save for one thing. After Jaune is left alone with his thoughts on this situation his lies have gotten him into, the scene shifts to being shown on a screen, making it clear that this is being watched from a camera on the roof. A finger taps on the screen a few times and we hear a familiar pensive hum.

The fall out with his team and his one on one with Ruby isn’t really changed, aside from Ren and Nora being more vocally concerned about Jaune’s actions and Pyrrha’s frosty change in behavior which the latter shoots down the concerns sharply.

Forever Falls/Aftermath

I don’t think I’ll change that much regarding the trip itself. I was thinking of mentioning the reason the teams are there is because this is their group task for the month (gathering sap for Professor Peach, who would actually be here taking originally Glynda’s place) and that’s why it’s only these three teams here. Same overall events occur: CRDL tries to get Pyrrha, Jaune stands up to Cardin, Grimm take down with Pyrrha’s unknown aid.

Jaune does apologize to Pyrrha like in the original and ask to train him. Though I was thinking that he’d get something a bit more painful than just a hard shove. I was thinking she’d take his hand and tackle him to the ground hard while pointing out his weaknesses.

This will cut to Ozpin’s office, with Cardin finishing up with telling his version of events who is obviously very agitated from the day’s events. In this Rewrite, there is no reason why he wouldn’t just tell on Jaune. Ozpin merely takes it all in with pensive expression before asking about the light that seemed to protect Jaune. Cardin answers this with confusion and some surprise, Ozpin nodding with a “Good to know” before updating a file on his tablet. Cardin is even more confused and asks what the Headmaster is going to do about Jaune. His answer: Nothing.

Cardin is shocked and furious at the Headmaster, going into him a bit before threatening to go to the board with this. Ozpin responds that even if he did so, he wouldn’t have a case. Cardin is completely confused as Ozpin explains: When students apply for Beacon, their applications go through extensive background checks before there are selections for the second round (ie the Entrance Exam). Such fake transcripts would have been discovered around that time.....had they actually gone through the admissions board. As it was, Jaune’s was accepted through an alternative.

But honestly, that’s not to say the admissions board is completely infallible, Ozpin would muse. Some are very inclined to promote those connected to them, others are interested in advancing their career elsewhere,.....and some might be inclined to take money from very influential people, such as a well meaning Uncle whose Council seat is up for reelection soon. Cardin gets noticeably stiff at that last one. Then Ozpin bring up some videos to the screen, all of them showing Cardin and his team bullying others, particularly Faunus students. The headmaster then would muse aloud that he wonder how Councilman Winchester, or moreso his Faunus opponent, would react to such un-Huntsman like behavior getting out into the news. Cardin immediately gets what the headmaster wants and goes completely quiet. Ozpin would merely say that he is a big believer in second chances and that while he understands that shenanigans in such as a school as this is to expected, Cardin would do best to remember that even if he thinks no one is watching he should act like there is. This cuts the meeting to a close with Cardin leaving quietly and Oz going back to his tablet, clicking back to a file with Jaune’s symbol on in it amongst others files with symbols on them. Only Jaune’s is a different color than the others and a scroll up would show us only one other file with that same color: Ruby’s.

Okay, it feels like I spent a lot of this post musing on the Cardin and Ozpin scene (really I could have done a oneshot on it), but this really was an important scene to establish some very important things to this Rewrite.

1. Ozpin is not an idiot. Ozpin is shown to be very aware of what’s going on at his school. While he may not get directly involved with things, he is shown to be watching his students. And while he is shown to be merciful in giving Cardin a second chance after the crap he pulled, he is also shown to not be a pushover. With such vigilance showcased, it will the Fall of Beacon even more devastating in how Ozpin missed his enemies working under his nose.

2. Ozpin’s true nature and goals are thrown into question. This rewrite is going to be more morally gray, especially in regards to Ozpin. Not only has he blackmailed a student to keep it quiet about another student, he knowingly let someone into his school he knew wasn’t qualified. In this rewrite up until this point he would have been shown as a distant but well intentioned headmaster. Now, he’s just gotten plenty shady. It would also bring into question Ruby’s enrollment into Beacon given that she got in in the same way (also strengthening those two’s parallels, but I digress).

3. Makes us question why Ozpin let Jaune in and sets up that Jaune is important in some way. As noted in my musings in a previous post, it makes no sense for Jaune to have gotten into Beacon unless Ozpin saw his transcripts and accepted him on that alone. Since we are shown in this scene Ozpin is aware of the transcripts, it makes us question what did he accept Jaune for. This also sets up that he will be important to the story moving forward, and not just as the revenge driven not ex boyfriend of the girl who tragically died.

Now, why did Ozpin accept him? Well, that will be covered in his own character post. I think this is plenty long enough and I think I will do something different before I get back to these Rewrite post. I hope like this one more than the last.

See you all! And stay save in this Covid time!

[popwasabi]

Why I don’t give a fuck about canon

Recently, after randomly coming across some dope pictures of Transformer toys on Instagram that gave me a strong case of nostalgia, I was inspired to revisit an old childhood favorite in “Beast Wars.”

“Beast Wars,” in case you never watched or heard of it as a kid, is the continuation of the Transformer’s story set in the future as descendants of the Auotobots and Decepticons, the Maximals and Predacons, respectively, accidentally travel to prehistoric Earth to continue a centuries long battle between the two opposing factions.

There’s a lot of to digest there, so I’m not going to go into extreme detail over the plot, but the cast features colorful characters such as Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Rattrap, Dinobot and Megatron to name a few. They all have interesting and distinct personalities and generally play well off each other. It was a big part of my childhood and I collected an ungodly amount of their toys back in the day.

(This was my first ever Beast Wars toy and I think it’s beautiful.)

My rewatch though was…a mixed bag to say the least. The graphics have not aged well. The adventure of the week setup of the plot was repetitive and lacked real character development at times. There were characters that were added in last minute to the show clearly to promote a new action figure over the story on numerous occasions. Though I found the humor to still be pretty good, the action was stale and just lacked high stakes most of the time, save for a few episodes.

I was not shocked it didn’t land terribly well on my rewatch but you know what did? “Beast Machines!”

“Beast Machines” was the follow-up to Beast Wars that had the Maximals fighting on Cybertron where Megatron has taken control of the whole planet using a virus that changes Transformers into mindless drones to do his bidding. The remaining Maximals manage to survive however after Optimus discovers The Oracle which reformats them into animal robot hybrids that are both mechanical and biological. This sets them on a quest to stop Megatron and bring biological and mechanical balance to Cybertron once and for all.

The series is much more narrative based than the previous as it follows a steady trajectory to its epic conclusion. The animation is much sharper, and the soundtrack is fun as hell to listen to still. The pacing is much faster as the stakes couldn’t be higher for the Maximals and all the old characters from the previous grow in interesting ways and develop into more organic people (literally in some ways). Optimus is a more hardcore and emotionally damaged leader and Megatron goes from being something of a punchline in the previous series to a far more menacing and calculating nemesis. The story touches on themes of balance, authoritarianism, PTSD, love and reunion to name a few and for a kids’ show it is, dare I say…more than meets the eye.

I absolutely loved it as a kid and I might actually love it even more as an adult, so it was shocking for me, to say the least, when I read further into the history of the show, that a lot of fans straight up rejected it back in the day.

Common complaints I came across were they didn’t like how characters, such as Ratrap especially, “changed.” They didn’t like the new bio/mechanical Maximals and couldn’t believe that Cybertron was once an organic world.

Their big reason (in just about every forum and video I saw about it)? It didn’t adhere to “canon.”

Now, I’ll start this by saying there is no objective way to critique or even not critique a story. People can like or hate something for a variety of reasons that don’t follow a strict logical pattern. Gods know I have a few questionable/divisive favorites in my catalogue that I have written about here that are based on abstract ideas and personal experiences.

(The Matrix Reloaded is still great btw)

But I will say, if you judge a mega franchise’s latest entry on how well it is supported by established canon it is, in my opinion, a flawed way to critique a work of fiction.

Canon, sometimes referred to as “lore” by fans, is most often applied and used to describe the long running back stories of franchises that stretch beyond just the main books, movies or series, or even the original narrative of the plot. Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and to a certain extent Harry Potter, all fall into this camp of series with so many interconnected parts, with more than one main character featured in each, that fans follow along this canon like ancient monks studying scripture and history books.

And they can be just as fanatical and over zealous about it.

(I wish they were more fanatical about proper hygiene or at least deodorant...)

My problem with the ways fans often view canon is that their conceptions of what a new story should be is based entirely on the past rather than what is happening right now with the story and what themes the writer is trying express with it this time. 

They base their impressions of the story on external continuity more than the internal continuity.

Yea, the changes in a series like “Beast Machines” are jarring to say the least. Cybertron was formally an organic world like Earth? Rattrap doesn’t have confidence in himself and actually at one point sells out his comrades? Transformers can be biological now? It’s a lot to take in but when watching the story play out it’s not like these elements aren’t explained through the text of the new story.

Cybertron lost balance between its robot inhabitants and its biological life forms and its why it’s out of balance now, and Megatron is the logical progression of that inbalance. Rattrap is struggling to understand his new form, half his friends on the Maximals have been turned into drones, and the remaining team out loud say they don’t have confidence in him. He has PTSD from both the events of this story and the Beast Wars and feels insecure because of how others view him and that’s perfectly logical to not just the story but also the canon. If a fan is willing to give a story a chance they will see that the canon hasn’t actually been destroyed in much of any way and the logical progression is actually there if they simply listen to what’s going on.

(Seriously, it’s not that deep.)

Fans need to stop confusing a character achieving a franchise long arc with being “suddenly different.” In this way, criticisms of canon in new entries in long running series reveal that fans really just lack imagination to connect the dots. It would be like complaining that Luke Skywalker can’t become paranoid and make a grave mistake in judgment because people never change, nevermind the character already has changed a lot from his origins in “A New Hope” to where he was in “Return of the Jedi.”

(Oh wait, people did do that…)

But that’s not to say you have to like the new direction either. You can understand these changes and still be like “well, it’s not for me. I don’t care for a PSTD angle or a new origin for Cybertron,” but that’s whole lot different than saying the new series “rapes your childhood” or “Bastardizes the canon.” All the old canon you hold nostalgia for still exists. My love for “Beast Machines” is not harmed by the existence of newer Transformers properties that don’t meet what I look for in the series.

Too often, fans take changes to established “lore” very personally because it doesn’t fit their expectations or have the same nostalgic feelings they had before. When new entries in mega franchises occur fans often try to judge it by how much it is like what they watched before, rather what makes it different and what it is saying now. Again, you don’t have to like new directions in tone or character but consistency to established work DOES NOT equal good storytelling.

I have not been immune to this myself in the past, of course. Back in the day I wrote a 2500-plus word diatribe on “The Amazing Spider-man 2” that mostly went after how it changed the character I grew up with in a bad way and butchered the established back story I knew him by.

You know what other story doesn’t follow canon very well though? “Spider-man: Homecoming.”

(Now, hear me out...)

Spider-man in the MCU is generally agreed upon to be a good thing by fans. Both movies were big hits both critically and financially and fans often go as far as to say Tom Holland is the “definitive” Peter Parker. 

But Holland’s Spider-man differs quite a bit from the comic-book webslinger. This Spider-man does not have a spidey sense. His best friend is not Harry Osbourne but in fact a retcon of a Mile Morales character. His father figure is Tony Stark, something that never happened in the comics, instead of Uncle Ben, which no matter what way you spin it is arguably his most important relationship in the series.

His character is a reverse of traditional Peter Parker too. Where comics Peter is a reluctant hero, who if anything hates being Spider-man and the burden of his responsibility, “Homecoming” Spider-man actively seeks out responsibility and in many ways enjoys his role as the famous webslinger. In fact, his whole arc is about him earning a spot as an Avenger. He wants to be THE hero and be worthy of it. It’s completely different from what we know of Spider-man.

(He just wants Tony sempai to notice him uWu)

Now I know some fans actually do complain about this Spidey from a “canon” standpoint, but most don’t. So why did this Spider-man get a pass for many but not “The Amazing” one? Quite simply it’s because stories, as cheesy as it sounds, are about feelings and stories like “Homecoming” tell a good story that effectively make those feelings connect with the audience.

We root for this Peter Parker and his journey to becoming an Avenger and successor to Iron Man because the story is told well, the emotions feel earned, and frankly both films are fun and enjoyable.

It’s easy to complain about canon for many nerds because it’s something tangible that they can point to and make a big stink about when they don’t understand why a movie isn’t reaching them. I don’t doubt that many neckbeards genuinely hate a film like “The Last Jedi” (Hell, I’m not a big fan myself) but when those same nerds enjoy something like “The Mandalorian,” a series that has its own loose relationship with canon and establishing new rules in the series, it tells me it’s not about the “lore” to them.

(Easy, fanboys...)

I have come to understand, in my growth as a nerd, that my problems with a lot of movies and TV shows in my favorite series rarely, if ever, have anything to do with the story not meeting some arbitrary guidelines regarding canon. It has more to with the story simply not connecting with me emotionally. The story isn’t drawing me in and keeping me on its narrative path. I’m not feeling the same magic that someone else might feel enjoying it because either a) it doesn’t feel earned to me or b) it just stylistically isn’t for me.

To paraphrase a line from another mega franchise, also owned by Disney, the canon is more like guidelines than actual rules.

(Didn’t expect to see ol’ Barbosa in this write up, did ye?)

It can show you where a story comes from but it isn’t law that you strictly adhere to it. Of course, when writing a new work in a popular series you should consider what came before it but I would like writer’s the freedom to try something new and most importantly fans to be open to it. You don’t have to like it but the idea that new entries in a story MUST remain strict to the canon is bull shit. Not even the original Star Wars trilogy adhered to its own canon perfectly, as clearly the writers were in fact making it up to a certain extent as they were going along.

(hmmmm...)

And that’s ok, because some of those changes were great! Made the story better and made the conclusion stronger.

Again, you don’t have to like every new entry that tries something bold or confrontational in your favorite franchise but if writers strictly followed canon to the T we wouldn’t have things like “Homecoming,” we wouldn’t have “The Mandalorian,” and we certainly wouldn’t have my favorite Transformers series “Beast Machines.”

Canon shouldn’t be a trap for writers and it shouldn’t be a litmus test for fans digesting it. There are so many better ways to judge a story than whether or not it fits neatly into established lore. A good story is a good story, regardless of whether or not it’s supported by something as static as canon.

“Beast Machines” has its flaws here and there, but canon isn’t one of them, at least not for me. Again, if you feel that the lore is important, that’s fine, you don’t have to ignore it but I would ask you to look beyond what came before when critiquing a new story.

Otherwise, you might miss something special that comes next…

Now then... 

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Under Raps

My feelings on this episode are pretty neutral. It’s not anything amazing, but it’s not the worst thing ever either. It’s just there, I guess. 

Summary: During a love festival, Corona displays a book full of signatures of lovers in honor of an old ruler's falling in love with the leader of a rival kingdom. Cassandra suddenly turns very secretive; Rapunzel learns it's because she's been seeing a guy named Andrew. Cassandra doesn't want Rapunzel's meddling, but the princess suggests a double date and they all go off in a hot air balloon. However, Andrew turns out to be part of an old faction that didn't like the unification of Corona and wants to steal the book.

This Backstory Doesn’t Add Up

So we open up with Big Nose narrating about the history of a war between Corona and a group of people called the Saporians. This is important for two reasons. First, because the Saporians are reoccurring villains in the show, and secondly, because it reveals where the underground tunnels running between Old Corona and the Island Capital come from. These tunnels are a reoccurring plot device in the show, along with the book that maps them. 

The problem is that what the story tells us doesn’t match the other information we are given. If it was only the Saporians who invaded then why does an Old Corona, with its own castle, exist to begin with? Why do the tunnels extend from both if King Herz Der Sonne made them? What purpose did they serve if he was only defending the island? Why are the Saporians led by a general and not a ruler? Why would marrying only a general unite the two kings and where was the Saporian kingdom to begin with? Why did they invade? Why are there still Saporians who haven’t accepted the merger centuries later and why do they live on the go outside the kingdom? If  Herz Der Sonne is such a good guy then why did he curse his grave with a zombie apocalypse? Ect. 

We keep getting hints throughout the show that Herz Der Sonne isn’t all he was cracked up to be, and you keep expecting a reveal that it was the Coronaians who started the war and oppressed the Saporians and then rewrote history, but it never comes. The show wants us to accept this very black and white conflict at face value even as it constantly undermines itself and muddies the waters. 

Pointing Out That Something is Stupid in the Show Itself Doesn’t Make it Any Less Stupid

As I stated back during Rapunzel’s Enemy, the show has a real problem with tone. Constantly showing us festival and holiday after festival and holiday only undermines the more serious elements in the ongoing story and creates mood whiplash. Also anything that reminds me of Cinderella 2 is not a good thing. 

Ahh Friedborg, You’re Such a Wasted Opportunity 

So she actually first appeared in Cassandra V. Eugene but I forgot to bring her up there. My bad. Friedborg is something of a fan favorite in the TTS fandom, and I like her too, but she adds nothing. She’s a joke character in a tv show already oversaturated by joke characters. More over the joke is actually offensive on some level since it all hinges on her being less conventionally attractive then the other female characters and the mains finding her weird because she never talks. 

The show tries to justify her existence by making her Big Nose’s girlfriend, but she’s not who he ended up with in the movie. And once again it’s kind of offensive to imply that only people who don’t match society’s contrived beauty standards can only find love with those that look like them. Thereby completely missing the point of Big Nose’s character arc. 

I’ll say it right now, Friedborg should have been Zan Tiri, or Demantius. Take your pick. I think ZT makes more sense, but etheir way she should have been a setup for something more important to the plot rather then just be being a vauge oddity that just pops up from time to time. 

I Miss This Version of Eugene

Throughout the first two seasons, Eugene and Cassandra were willing to point out Rapunzel’s BS. Forcing her to confront her flaws and re-examine her positions.I would argue that the show could have pushed this even further but at least it was there. By the final season no one was doing this. Rapunzel is allowed to be as awful as she wants to be without consequence. Meaning she never learns anything and stops growing as a character and the show acts like this a positive thing. It is not. In fact, it is the biggest flaw of the whole show as it fails to achieve the one thing it originally set out to do; which is to tell a coming of age story with Rapunzel. 

It also has the added effect of making Eugene a doormat to Rapunzel’s bulling, thereby regressing his character as well and presenting an unhealthy relationship as a goal to be achieved to younger viewers. I can not stress enough to young girls and young men in particular, that Rapunzel and Eugene are not ‘relationship goals’ in this show. Not after season 3. 

Xavier Doesn’t Get a Proper Introduction 

So Xavier is actually pretty important to the ongoing plot. He’s more or less the exposition fairy for the show, but he’s not really established. He just suddenly appears here with no prior meeting and he just so happens to know what the main characters need to know with no explanation as to how he knows. 

His part here is so forgettable that I legit forgot who he was when he reappeared in the mid-season finale. I had thought that the writers just threw in a random character for plot purposes. And to be fair they did. Just they did it here instead of in Queen for a Day. 

If the showrunners wanted Xavier to be historian who knows everything and tells stories, then he should have been introduced as the narrator of the history of Hearts Day instead of Big Nose. 

Another Lesson Not Learned 

We get this big heart to heart moment of Raps and Cass coming to an understanding, with Rapunzel promising not to intrude and Cass promising to being more honest about her feelings. This is walked back on several times and made part of the core conflict of the last two seasons. 

Once again, any problem that can be solved in less then five minutes of talking isn’t a strong enough conflict to drive multiple seasons. If this had been a show without an ongoing narrative, like say The Rescue Rangers or even Batman the Animated Series, then the repeated lessons wouldn’t be a problem. We expect characters to be static and to reset after each episode since they’re not shows that you watch in order. 

But if you do go the overarching arc route for a story, then people expect lasting character development. Even in shows like Gravity Falls or Steven Universe, where the change is more gradual and the characters do repeat mistakes occasionally, there’s still a marketed change by the end. One that indicates improvement by the characters, and the inter conflicts are never exactly the same each time with exactly the same lesson over and over again. 

 Oh Look, Cassandra Once Again Achieving her Goal of Validation 

Cass is awarded a medal by her father for stopping Andrew. Don’t expect her or the show to remember this. 

Also more Cass and Cap interaction that we don’t get to see. 

Can We Not Imply That Cassandra Still has a Crush on the Guy Who Lied to Her and Then Almost Killed Her, and Can We Not Act Like This is a Good Thing?

So this flower was given to Cassandra by Andrew and her keeping it makes zero sense. 

First off lets not have one of our few strong independent female characters crushing on the show’s stereotypical ‘nice guy’, okay? That’s all kinds of gross. Secondly, if the intention was to show that Cass was now more willing to open up about her feelings, then wouldn’t her keeping one of the gifts Raps made her earlier in the episode make more sense? After all, that’s the relationship that actually matters to Cassandra and is the basis of the whole show. 

But this all boils down to the fact that the creator sees Cassandra as straight, always has, and thinks her crushing on the guy who manipulated her is somehow better than ‘no-homo’. Now you can headcanon Cass as whatever you want and ship her with whomever you want, as canon doesn’t matter. But I find it hilarious that most of the head showrunner’s biggest supporters are mainly Casspunzel fans and yet he’s the one who made them ‘sisters’ and sees them as such.

Like I hate to break it to you guys, but a Cass led spin-off headed by Chris won't be the lesbian rep that you’ve always dreamed of. You’re better off just watching the She-Ra reboot. 

But things gets even worse when Rapunzel approves of this stupid ‘crush’ ...

Don’t Ever Tell Someone That You’re Proud of Them For Going On a Date

Dating is just something some people choose to do together and some people choose not to engage in that. It’s not an accomplishment and it shouldn’t be treated as such. This is insulting to both people who don’t date, for whatever reason, and to women who hate being being defined by their relationships, which is most of us. 

Even if you’re being charitable and try to make this about Cassandra self esteem and her learning she’s worth ‘loving’, which is the reason some people have offered up for this scene, it still falls apart when it’s not established that Cassandra ever had such self esteem issues to begin with and was not looking for romance anyways. And if that is what the show is going for then it’s still problematic to suggest that being found as attractive by someone else is need for self esteem. In fact, that’s kind of the opposite of what self esteem is.    

Conclusion 

Overall this episode was ‘meh’. Like most season one episodes the problems stem from the ongoing narrative and lack of follow though in later seasons. However there’s enough stuff in here on it’s own to rub me just the wrong way that I can’t actually call it good either. 

It doesn’t help that I don’t see the appeal of Andrew at all. Watching the character is just a cringefest for me. He’s too similar to real life men I’ve unfortunately met and therefore sends alarm bells ringing in my head. And I agree with Eugene; he’s not all that handsome. 

[mysteriesofmarcy]

How would Star vs. the Forces of Evil have ended if you'd written the show?

I LOVE this question, anon. And sorry this is a few weeks late, but I wanted to finish writing my episode reviews before I wrote this answer. And I took a few days to type it because I wanted to make sure to give you the best answer I can.

For starters, I would not have (gasp!) forced Starco to happen. I said from the beginning that I would only be into Starco if it was done well, and I think even some hardcore shippers would agree that it was not. Like Marco said, the whole thing in Here to Help was kind of random, to the point where I couldn’t even remember which part of the finale it happened in. I probably would not have made it happen at all but, as a concession to the shippers, I would have left the door open for the future in which they could get together romantically (probably far into the future, similar to Phineas and Isabella if Act Your Age hadn’t happened).

If my co-writers somehow convinced me to make Starco happen during the show, I would have made it happen earlier and probably devoted a whole episode to it, probably in or around The Knight Shift. Then I would explore the relationship a little more in episodes after that. Maybe a kiss here, hand holding there, and I would also add at least one more episode solely focused on them. If I had to give up an episode to do this, it would be either Doop-Doop or Ready, Aim, Fire. (The Ponyhead Show at least had a good ending, unlike the Star show. Otherwise that would be my first choice.)

How would I have handled Kellco? First of all, let me reiterate that KELLCO IS NOT A SHIP. IT NEVER WAS. Kelly said that being breakup buddies simply meant that they would help each other with their respective breakups (even though Marco hadn’t broken up with anyone since coming to Mewni). To my (admittedly weak) romantic senses, the show seemed to imply that they were just “friends with benefits.” I probably wouldn’t have even hinted at there being anything there except friendship. The last thing we needed was another pointless love triangle situation.

Now about Stom/Tomstar. Obviously the way they broke up in the show’s canon was… pretty bad, to say the least. I mean, once Tom cleaned up his act and became a good character (sometime late in season 3), I couldn’t help but think that he deserved Star. The guy made a conscious effort to improve himself. Not only did he try, but he actually succeeded in that, and in getting the girl he wanted! That is how their relationship should have ended (in the scope of the show). Maybe later they could decide “Eh, we’re not really a great fit for each other” but that would be much later. But the show just decided to flush all that down the toilet because Starco Starco Starco!

On a similar note, I would not have made Jackie gay. I would have let Chloe stay, but no way is she dating Jackie. I’m… not really sure what I would do with them. I could see a few possibilities here, including, but not limited to: Jackie x Marco 2.0, Chloe x Marco, Chloe is weird enough to like Ferguson or Alfonso (or even Oskar), or “everyone just comes back together as friends”.

I would also have to seriously rework Cleaved, especially Star’s decision to destroy magic. There is no way that destroying all magic was the correct solution. That honestly sounds like communist propaganda. It’s almost like saying “Only certain people have guns; therefore, let’s take all the guns away from everybody.” (I say almost because while magic is an innate ability in Star’s universe, guns are a thing any upstanding citizen can buy in the US.) The fact that this action saved the monsters’ lives is irrelevant compared to all the untold damage it caused. I can see why Star’s “chaotic good” nature would lead her to believe this was the solution, but I would have had her just present this as an idea, rather than actually go through with it. They could have even used a version of this idea, concentrated in some way to destroy the magic within Mina. Kind of mirroring what Star did to Ludo at the end of Toffee.

The earth episodes would also get an overhaul. Namely, they would start a lot earlier in the season and there would be more of them. This would not only allow time to give all the earth characters proper conclusions, but would also allow us to explore their reactions to Marco’s time on Mewni in a little more depth. We could have had at least one episode to deal with each other earth character or plotline instead of just trying to cram them all into the Britta’s Tacos episode.

I would have to seriously rework the antagonists too. It seemed like Moon was slowly but surely accepting that most of the monsters are good too, but then she came out of nowhere and worked with the final boss. While I can understand the twist, it was just a poor decision to actually make it happen, especially with absolutely NO WARNING WHATSOEVER. We should have at least been shown more of Moon’s internal struggle over whether to hold on to her old habits, or accept the new way of doing things. Then, whatever decision she made would be more believable. My thought is that because of the conflict within herself, Moon’s attitude would be along the lines of “I am going to stay out of it, but please don’t hurt my daughter.”

Mina’s arc would have to have a little more substance to be totally believable. Yeah, she was introduced in season 2 as Star’s idol who had gone bananas, but I hardly call that a setup for her being the main villain of the finale. As recently as the middle of season 4, I remember there being debate over who the final villain would be and what exactly the conflict would be about. If we could have gotten an episode or even a longer flashback to explain Mina’s backstory, it would have been better.

Just a couple more isolated thoughts: It seems to me that most of the prominent female characters were written poorly in the final season and especially the finale, but all the prominent male characters were written well. And this isn’t me being sexist; the strength of the show as a whole is more based on its females. But Tom, Globgor, River, and Marco were the best characters this season and I think we can agree on that.

So that’s how I would have written the ending to Star vs the Forces of Evil. But if I couldn’t change the content of the episodes, I would have ended it at Toffee. Like I said in its episode review, it would have made the perfect ending to the series.