#blue lock va commentary

[strikerandoverachiever]

So… it sounds we can expect the Igaguri dislike to intensify, once the anime comes out…😅😂😅

[busterscorp]

Why I Am So Conflicted On ReVice? (Episode 32 Checkpoint)

So Kamen Rider ReVice has been airing and i’ve been watching it week to week for my Tokusatsu Podcast TWIT. For the most part i’ve been enjoying it a lot but there’s little things here and there that add up for me to put the show down for me a few pegs so I want to blab about a few problems I have with ReVice along with the things I’m really into. 

Pro Number 1: ReVice is a Compelling Duo

Something about the last two Kamen Rider series (Zero One and Saber) that I noticed was that my favorite characters didn’t end up being the protagonist. Sure I still think Aruto and Touma are good characters but they weren’t the star of there self tilted show which bugged me in a nitpicky way. However ReVice decides to give the titular of Kamen Rider Revi (Ikki) and Vice a lot of great development and banter with one another. 

Vice took sometime to vibe with (especially given that his VA is a racist jerk) but he quickly became a really fun dude who could bring actual pathos to scenes. Ikki is a charming guy who can bring the heroic speeches a Kamen Rider is known for but still has his own doubts and turmoil to overcome which physically manifests in Vice being apart of him. 

Con Number 1: Secondary Blues

Secondary Riders have often been fan favorite characters for modern Kamen Rider shows with Vulcan and Blades from Zero One and Saber respectively often being seen as the best parts of their shows and sadly the same can’t be said for ReVice. Daji has a great start as his Demon Kagero/Kamen Rider Evil is a joy to watch but after Daji becomes Live things go downhill for his character.

 There’s some great little moments like with Kagero coming back a few times (the scene where he defends his sister with his belt and talks about curry is the peak of his character and I mean this unironically) but Holy Live arc felt so hollow. Some say it’s because it only had one episode but I disagree. I think the main problem is that there wasn’t really a strong message to go with Live vs Evil into Holy Live like with ReVice’s Magma or Thunder Gale forms. It just felt like “We have to fight for the sake of fighting” with no important lesson to be learned. 

Not to mention unlike the other characters, Daji just seems the most plain in terms of personality outside of his Kagero persona which would normally be fine but the lack of focus he gets in the show doesn’t help me endear to him.

Pro Number 2: Kamen Rider Solved Sexism

Sakura/Kamen Rider Jeanne is probably the best part of the show and the most innovative aspect of it to the Kamen Rider franchise. The head writer for the series, Hanta Kinoshita, kept pushing to include a female Rider for this show even wanting a women to play the titular role for this series and he made sure to give Sakura not just a legitimately good arc for a female Kamen Rider (where the bar is set incredibly low mind you) but a good arc for a character in general. 

While her first attempt at a transformation failed, it’s only to confront her weakness which manifests in the marketability cute demon Lovekov once she does transform. I like to think of that plot point as a mini commentary on how Toei executives think female Riders are useless but Sakura overcoming the perceptions to prove em wrong. Even after her debut she’s still active in the plot via her rivalry with Aguilera, and learning about the creator of her Belt, The Weekend so she’s always being challenged. Probably the only complaint I have of her is that her belt is locked behind Premium Bandai instead of a proper retail release...speaking of.

Con(ish) Number 2: The Show Hates Hiromi

I call this a Con(ish) because Hiromi starts off great. Despite not getting a focus episode till his trilogy of episodes, he gets all these neat bits of characterization and progress in the background about his beliefs and fears which lead up to his trilogy which are good episodes...up until the ending where his “death” is the most comically anti climax thing I've seen in awhile. 

Yeah he’s not dead but the way we learn about why he’s not dead is just out of nowhere. We don’t even see his face in the episode where he is confirmed alive and kickin. This is probably to get us poor fools to watch the specials something ReVice has had a problem with between this and the Vail special. I mean ReVice has had MOSTLY good side content (the HBV was awful minus the Build form fight) so I guess it’s fine but I wish it was in the main show to begin with. Hoping Hiromi can get back on his feet in time for the final arc.

Wrap Up

That’s some of the ReVice thoughts I have at the moment. I could get into more but maybe for a later date when the show finishes. I just did this to articulate my conflicted thoughts on ReVice. The show is good and I would recommend it but in my five years as a Kamen Rider fan, you can get fatigued, cynical, and start to notice patterns that may annoy you which is why it’s important to take breaks and experience other media in the meantime. Anyway i don’t know how to end this blog so...subscribe to my YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF3w6-RAiok95mbro-VXB-g

[blackdragon-selfships]

My Decision: Thoughts, Theories, and Some Changes to how I do Things from here

Ok...so here it is. I’ve decided to keep F/O-ing Aaravos. What happened in season 3 wasn’t unexpected. The creators hinted numerous times about his role in season 3, and I knew something was coming. I just wasn’t sure how to process my feelings on it.

Warning: If you care about spoilers, don’t read any further. Spoilers for season 3 of The Dragon Prince is below.

I came to the conclusion it wasn’t that he did bad things...but who toward. That being Viren. The villain of the show. I like Viren as a character still, and I guess now I see what Jason Simpson (his VA) in an interview was saying. He likes Viren as the complicated villain he is...but if he wasn’t just joking around, he doesn’t feel the same about Aaravos. At least this season.

I think it’s because those that genuinely like Viren’s character (not agreeing with his actions, but not disliking him as a character) will have a harder time with the scenes where Aaravos is doing something to him. Like the webbed up eye so he could see Aaravos’ ghostly apparition or the scene where the caterpillar emerged from Viren’s mouth but much longer and larger...and then continued to change in the final episode. As well as the many times he used clever wordplay on Viren to steer his thoughts into bigger plans...plans I think Viren would have had already, but until he became king he didn’t have the power to go through with it and was still in the habit of not overstepping his boundaries.

Viren is capable of lying and could be lying to himself about what he wants from Xadia. He just got power, he doesn’t want to lose it over a risky decision...but Aaravos knows what Viren is like, and uses that to his advantage.

If you like Viren’s character...you’ll probably have a hard time still liking Aaravos in those scenes. Because Viren IS the bad guy...and Aaravos IS manipulating him slowly but surely. It still isn’t clear what this means, or why...but I’m sticking to my belief Aaravos’ role isn’t as a villain, but he is an antagonist. There’s a difference between the two.

The show creators say mixed things on him. In their Tweets we get quite a bit of subtle but ominous warnings...and a confession his design was an attack on the fandom, from Aaron Ehasz (show co-creator) as a joke. Then Ehasz repeatedly says throughout several interviews that Aaravos is very complicated, and has said once that Aaravos is “disliked, that’s not the same as bad.” This being in response to Justin Richmond (the other co-creator) saying “and obviously he’s bad enough they literally tried erasing him from the {history} books.” Ehasz’ exact response being “he’s complicated” and Richmond saying “he’s interesting enough they tried erasing him from the books.” Ending in the above line from Ehasz of “he’s disliked. That’s not the same as bad.”

He was making a clear distinction between the two words, probably anticipating the suspicions from the fans hearing or reading the interview of his (Aaravos’) place in the story. This doesn’t make him good either...canonically I can’t call Aaravos “good” in any sense right now. Except good at being sassy and a show-off. lol

But I won’t put him fully in the villain category. Sol Regem was willing to kill the future King of the Dragons and an elf of Xadia if they didn’t let him kill the human with them either way. Yet he’s in all the promotional posters for some reason as well as the prologue opening. That part, of course, is made more clear in the first episode of season 3, though. He was flying toward the Dark Mage from the prologue in episode 1 of season 1. Then flying blindly as his face was burning after the confrontation.

He’s clearly also important to the plot...but I can’t call him ‘bad’. Not great...but not a villain.

The last bit of evidence is Aaravos’ actual name. It’s of Danish and Arabic origin and means “between light and dark, not good or bad.” Every other name has been spot-on:

Callum-Dove King: He’s a Sky Mage, and the Skywing elves are strongly influenced by bird themes, much like Moonshadows have strong ninja themes and the Startouch...is literally covered in stars and wearing a constellation on his clothes. Callum is a Sky mage, doves are birds, and he’s working toward a peaceful future. Doves are a symbol of peace.

Ezran-Helper: Look how helpful he was this season especially!

Viren-Leader of heroes: Uh...ok I don’t know WHAT heroes...but he is a good leader. Say what you will about his character, he has leadership skills. Aaravos didn’t have to teach him that stuff.

Claudia-Lame: Ok this is a bit harsh...but it is the ‘crippled’ lame. She’s...not doing well now. She isn’t physically crippled, but mentally and emotionally she is pretty badly wounded.

Ziard-Wizard: He’s a Dark Mage. A wizard. Spot on.

Sol Regem-Sun King: They literally say his name meaning...SUN KING. He was a king of the dragons once and is an Archdragon of the Sun.

Zubeia-Beauty, grace any of those. She really fits that name. She is beautiful.

Avizandum-Reserve Judgement: I interpret that to mean on Aaravos. He locked him in the place behind the mirror because he isn’t sure how to deal with him yet before Viren and Harrow slay him (Avizandum.) Aaravos is literally in 300 year jail time right now, and Avizandum was still deciding if he should execute him or not for whatever he did.

That or he’s reserving judgment on humans, which is why he defends the border instead. We might find out eventually...cause that is still a mystery. Why is the king of the dragons guarding the boarder 24/7? I get he was basically the ruler of all of Xadia...but it’s still an odd choice.

Anyway, Aaravos. Names clearly mean things in this show. I think his is the hint that he seems bad right now, but he isn’t. He isn’t good, but he isn’t bad. I don’t know how they’ll pull that off...but I’ll be impressed if they do.

There was also still more evidence on a theory I have that he’s telling the story is true as well. In the prologue, he calls Avizandum by his human-given name: Thunder. He says “the humans called him Thunder. For when he spoke his voice shook the earth and the sky.” In the episode we learn what happened to Avizandum, Aaravos is the one to say the name, but Viren doesn’t recognize it.

Viren is the one that tells Aaravos what they called Avizandum. Which was “Thunder.” If Aaravos isn’t an omniscient narrator and has been imprisoned for 300 years or so...how would he know this in the prologue if he didn’t in that scene? Coupled with the opening sequence of his hands uncurling a map, the lighting and desk surface or the shade of blue of his skin being nothing like in his prison. I could be wrong, and while I’d be disappointed to be...oh well.

What I’m saying is...Aaravos lives to tell the story if my theory is right. Which means he isn’t bad enough the writers have to kill him or something else...I don’t know how they’ll do it if it’s true, but I will be quite interested to see it.

Aside from the Sunfire elves in Lux Area, who I don’t think deserved what happened, his actions are all for a purpose related to what’s happening...but if we knew his perspective maybe it would seem less like a random evil act, which contradicts him being complex if it was just a show of his power and how ruthless he can be. Because from our perspective there wasn’t a reason to kill the Sun Queen other than “look how evil he is! Oooh!” Which doesn’t go along with the information we’ve been given so far. There’s more to this scene, I’m sure. Though it could just be that he killed her so she couldn’t reveal what he whispered in her ear...which was also a strange move. See? He’s complicated and there are still a lot of mysteries surrounding him and his actions. Aside from that, the only one Aaravos has done much of anything to is Viren. Anything kind of graphic and sort of gross (at least with the caterpillar.) Who is again...the Bad Guy.

So all that to say...yes, I’m going to keep him as an f/o. But in doing so I’m ignoring the show canon on this blog. As in I won’t be trying to work my S/I into the narrative as much anymore for the time being. I’m going to treat the blog similar to how @justafictionalthing​ where I don’t worry about canon or accuracy to the character’s personality in the source material to a T. I still love the show, don’t misunderstand. I’m going to watch it to the end of the saga, whatever happens...but on this blog, for the time being, I’m treating it like the Aaravos here and the canon are separate.

My Aaravos, the interpretation on this blog, is aware of his source material. If anyone’s read Inkheart, think of it like that. Fictional character comes out of their source material but still exists in the story itself as well. I might make a little story or something explaining this, but that’s the angle I’m going for in all future Takeovers and commentary.

I don’t dislike his canon portrayal, I know he’s more than what we saw...but for the blog it just doesn’t work right now. My S/I would never be ok with what he’s been doing...and keeping it hidden from her goes into some risky territory... I like that kind of stuff if there’s a happy ending payoff, but for the overall blog and my way of selfshipping, which has turned more “I’m actually with this character, not just writing myself in their story,” it doesn’t work.

TL;DR: I don’t hate or even dislike canon!Aaravos, but he doesn’t work well with what I want on this blog. I’m still with him, but the version you guys have gotten to know on this blog. Sassy but friendly and knowledgeable, and now separated from his source material almost Inkheart-style.

I’m too attached to who he is now from relationship development to drop this. I still like his canon self, but he’s changed a lot on this blog. If you don’t like that, watch the show for the ‘true’ Aaravos experience. Nothing but soft and sassy here for now. With some dark stuff if I’m in the mood for it.

[entergamingxp]

In Other Waters review – an ocean sanctuary for the meditative explorer • Eurogamer.net

It begins with one of the loveliest interfaces I’ve ever handled, a fluorescent origami puzzle of panels, dials and buttons, at once tactile and ethereal, vintage and high-tech, like a holographic astrolabe. At its centre, a circle of ocean rendered in the style of an old-time sea chart, its delicately nested contours travelling beyond the dashboard into a turquoise haze.

In Other Waters review

Developer: Jump Over the Age

Publisher: Fellow Traveller

Platform: Reviewed on Switch

Availability: Out now on Switch and PC

A tap of space bar sends out a wailing sonar wave, populating that circle of water with triangular waypoints and coloured dots, darting through or forming undulating patterns – creatures, going about their lives without much heed for the fumbling, dive-suited human in their midst. Tap a waypoint to scan it, a brief but evocative description filling a fold-out panel to the right. Push one of the larger buttons to set that waypoint as a destination, a sextant arm locking across the view with a gratifying click. Hit another button to engage the suit’s thrusters, then hit space on arrival to scan your surroundings anew.

This is the heartbeat of In Other Waters, a unique and mesmerising exploration game from Jump Over The Age, set on an alien planet. It’s a tempo that carries you from sunlit shallows to waters clogged with poisonous microbes, from pillars decked with pollen to abyssal reaches that harbour dreadful secrets. There is little to break the rhythm – no in-game antagonist to defeat, and only a small handful of tools such as laser cutters that open up initially inaccessible regions. Even the occasional terrain hazards, which range from stinging veils to pools of corrosive brine, are more like encouragements to keep moving than threats.

That ritual of scanning and setting a course may sound monotonous. During the first of my eight hours with the game, I worried that the cetacean whistles and clicks of the wonderfully tuned interface might begin to grate, that repetition might tempt me to skim past vital pieces of text. That temptation is fiercest when you’re wandering through toxic water, your eye flicking between a dwindling O2 reserve on the left and the leisurely unfolding commentary on the right. But these oppressive regions are manageable enough once your panic is cooled – your suit can metabolise scraps of organic matter for oxygen and power, and the only penalty for running out is being recovered by drone and obliged to start that region over.

After a while, you realise what the game is asking of you: not just curiosity but reflection and a certain method, a willingness to sample this ocean one bit at a time, as a considerate scientist would. You also realise that what you’re doing when you move and scan is weaving two lifeforms together – a xenobiologist, Dr Ellery Vas, who is searching these undiscovered waters for somebody she once knew, and the strange AI unit she finds abandoned on a reef.

Ellery can’t operate the suit herself: rather, she sets broad objectives, region by region, leaving it up to you how you achieve them and what you investigate along the way. Her agency in the field consists of remarking on and writing up the creatures and things you find. You can’t communicate with her beyond responding “yes” or “no” to very infrequent questions, but the act of exploration constitutes a dialogue, a tidal back-and-forth between an AI’s visualisations and a human’s powers of description and analysis.

That player-enacted symbiosis facilitates a well-paced, exposition-lite story about coexisting with nonhuman life, against the ravages of interplanetary capitalism. Ellery is an employee of Baikal, a corporation that strips whole worlds of resources. Working for this entity is the price she pays for escaping an Earth whose seas have been sterilised by climate change. She’s a survivor, then, but she is still a scientist, and Gliese 667Cc – an actual, potentially habitable exoplanet, previously visited by the Alien vs Predator franchise – is everything Earth has lost. You’ll encounter scores of bewitching lifeforms, collecting bits of plant frond or shell with a tool that resembles a shutter-operated camera, and storing them at the laboratory you uncover early in the game.

The lab itself – which serves as a chapter-breaking hub – is a delightful specimen, its floors stacked like slides under a microscope. Here, you can analyse samples you’ve collected to fill out a database, Ellery’s initial observations and speculations blooming into marvellously nerdy accounts of predation and reproduction. The game’s lead designer and writer Gareth Damian Martin is a florid stylist, but he and his co-writers strike a balance in the game between rhapsody and clinical precision. Gather enough data and you’ll unlock a sketch of the creature, a postcard to the AI from Ellery’s world.

The creatures are like nothing else you’ll find in a game, their eerieness only amplified by the knowledge that they are mournful homages to organisms whose habitats we are destroying. I’ll try not to spoil them too much, but we’re a long way from videogame staples like sharks. There’s a huge emphasis on interdependence: every organism is the way it is thanks to its interactions with another, be it turning a much larger organism into a habitat, or cultivating bacteria for food. Some organisms are in fact several, entwined together like Ellery and the AI.

Fascinating revelations, indeed, but as a mechanic the taxonomy system feels a bit wayward. Progress through the game is broadly defined by a database completion percentage, visible on your save file. Maxing a percentage is the hallmark of a more ruthless, acquisitive fantasy than In Other Waters – it clashes with the pliant tone of Ellery’s notes, which often end with yet more questions. Accepting the planet’s mysteries rather than trying to unravel every last one is part of the game’s ecological message, and as such, that touch of completionism seems out of place.

It’s a tiny quibble, though, forgotten the second you venture back out into the water. The game’s colour palette is astonishing, creating an atmosphere most open world blockbusters can only dream of. Beyond that opening wash of radioactive turquoise and sherbet yellow, you can expect glaring stews of red and green, and sunken recesses where the map is a tracery of bone emerging from midnight blue. Amplifying the mood is Amos Roddy’s meditative electronic score, which is elegantly attuned to the unfolding plot. Some of the major dramatic beats are tethered to melodies, played out note by note as you click between lines.

It might seem annoying that you can’t “escape” In Other Waters’ interface and explore the naturalistic three-dimensional landscape hinted at by Ellery’s sketches – certainly, I’d love to see a 3D interpretation of one particular colonial lifeform – but that’s missing the point. The AI’s perspective is reality, its collaboration with Ellery producing a world. That concept of reality as a co-production, fashioned by on-going interaction and acceptance, is anathema to the version offered by Baikal, which cynically divides existence into humans and the things we use. It’s a concept In Other Waters makes you live, scan by scan, waypoint by waypoint, as you contemplate an ocean that is every bit as unreal and fragile as our own.

Disclaimer: In Other Waters creator Gareth Damian Martin is a former Eurogamer contributor.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/04/in-other-waters-review-an-ocean-sanctuary-for-the-meditative-explorer-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-other-waters-review-an-ocean-sanctuary-for-the-meditative-explorer-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[strikerandoverachiever]

And one more from Kamiya Hiroshi, Ego’s VA!

[strikerandoverachiever]

And this is part 2 of the Igaguri comment from his VA, Ichikawa Aoi.

[strikerandoverachiever]

Seeing these kind of comments from the voice actors only makes me that more excited for the anime!😄❤️❤️❤️