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shihalyfie · 3 years

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“I know it has its problems, but...“

Since we’re at a whole 21 years since the series first aired, I think it’s about time we address this, but: as a 02 fan, I would like to ask other 02 fans that we stop saying this.

It’s no secret that if you’re a 02 fan, you’re probably used to hearing the fanbase constantly trash-talk it for various reasons, ranging from petty things like the infamous over-pedestaling of Adventure, to more substantial criticisms of its writing. Generally speaking, you’ll hear complaints like: the characters are underdeveloped, the plot doesn’t make sense, et cetera. Quite understandably, 02 fans don’t usually have the energy to argue back about it, and tend to preface discussions of liking the series with things like “I know it has its problems, but...” so they can preliminarily get people off their back and stave off the “you like 02? But it’s so bad!” lashback before it happens.

The problem is that I think this constant reinforcement of “yeah I acknowledge it had its problems” -- as in, without even being prompted and being said solely as a way to “justify” your like of the series -- has actually made the problem unnecessarily worse, in that it validates people’s assertions that 02 was a bad series and that everyone who likes it only likes it "because they do”, and not because there were things that spoke to them about it. It’s one thing if 02 criticisms are being brought up in a context where criticism is actually appropriate, or if a fan actually is in the mood to vent about the problems, but if we’re just talking about a context where being critical contributes nothing productive to the discussion, there’s not a lot of good that can come from constantly “admitting” that it has problems at a time like that, because it just continues enabling the idea of the series remaining in public memory with the stigma associated with it by default. In effect, it’s led to this “brainwashing” phenomenon where mantras like “the 02 characters didn’t get any development” are repeated and merged into public memory like they’re law, and because people don’t question it, it ends up getting passed around further, and reinforced even more, and the cycle continues.

Part of the reason I’ve been writing so much for this blog is that I feel like this series is very misunderstood, especially in terms of the idea they did get character development and that a lot of the plot beats make more sense when you think of them more from a thematic and emotional point of view than an adventure-and-action story point of view, and that perhaps the real issue was more that they were too subtle in communicating those things, so they often went over the audience’s heads. Intrinsically, I think a lot of 02 fans actually do understand that these elements were present, even if they can’t vocalize it -- that’s why we as fans gravitated towards the series, after all -- but because it’s too exhausting to argue back about it, it’s easier to just “agree” that there were serious problems and act like the series is some kind of guilty pleasure.

It’s true that 02 does have a lot of issues in its writing, but so does every other Digimon series, and so does every other series or piece of media in this world, and it’s not like you have to preface talking about all of the other things you like with “I know it has its problems, but...”, right? There’s a whole theory about media being able to still hit emotionally even when its plot writing is sloppy, of which 02 is not the first and most certainly is not the last of. This is especially because I think, in modern years, as more people have gained an adult’s perspective and are able to pick up on all of the things that went over their heads when they first watched it as kids, people are starting to retroactively understand that there was something in it that was special, despite everything else about it. (There have certainly been multiple testimonies from people who have said that, upon rewatching, they’ve come to understand the heavy thematic importance of what it was trying to say.)

This does not mean that I think everyone should like the series, or that it’s unreasonable that people will dislike it. If it is true that it didn’t communicate its intent well, that’s an issue in itself, and I don’t think people should be obligated to rewatch things they’re not interested in, much less try and pick it apart with a pair of tweezers. If it didn’t sit with them, then it didn’t. But if you look at staff interviews and testimony about 02 and all of the thought that went behind its lore and storytelling, there’s more than enough evidence that the creators of the series put a ton of thought and care into what they wanted to say, even if it wasn’t fully communicated, and a lot of people like 02 no matter how many of its detractors want to claim that it’s disposable (the reception to the 02 characters in Kizuna should demonstrate that more than well enough), and it’s most likely because people were able to catch onto that -- so it pains me to see it so easily dismissed and equated with being “the bad guilty pleasure series” just because the mantra of it being “bad” has been taken for granted.

And, for goodness’s sake, it’s been more than 20 years, and this is a series that was inherently about the unhealthiness of drowning in regrets of “it should have been like this” or whatnot instead of thinking productively about what it did provide and moving forward with it. There’s definitely a time to bring up criticisms when they’re relevant to the discussion, but there are also times when it’s simply not necessary and doesn’t help anything at all. Is an anniversary fanart meant to wax positively about what this series means to the artist really a place to be putting a disclaimer about the series’s writing problems like it’s some kind of review blog?

All I’m asking is, basically, that people who like 02 be a bit more unapologetic about liking it. If someone gives you grief for liking it like it’s some kind of sin, that’s their problem for being an insensitive jerk and denying your right to have preferences, not on you for liking something “bad”. And if someone does have more thoughtful criticisms that you happen to disagree with, there’s no problem in actually declaring that you disagree with those criticisms -- this is easier said than done because of how exhausting it is to fight against such a reinforced mantra like this, but at the very least, you can say that you respectfully disagree with those criticisms instead of “caving” to it just because the fanbase treats it as law. I’ve written my meta mainly because I understand that this series can be frustratingly obtuse, and putting it in easy-to-understand words that people can pass around will instigate proper discussion of the series (especially in regards to the characters, whom I feel are much more complex than they’re given credit for), but it doesn’t even really have to be my meta, since it’s only my way of seeing it and I’m sure others may see it differently. I do it because I hope it’s helpful, but I’d honestly be happy as long as 02 fans (and even possibly not-quite-fans but still open-minded people) would at least be willing to engage in thoughtful discussion about whether all of the stuff the fanbase has been saying ad nauseam for two decades is actually true, or whether there’s more to it beyond the surface.

I don’t expect this single Tumblr post, or even all of my meta, to end up having that huge of an impact against the decades of fanbase echo chambering, but I would appreciate it if 02 fans reading this could take this to heart, encourage other 02 fans they know to do the same, and, most importantly, feel a little less ashamed about liking this series.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02

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ranboo5 · 3 years

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can i still ask about the homestuck au? i have some classpect opinions but i would love to hear if there’s more than that!

YES you can I needed 2 make a proper Compilation Post anyway. Uhh here's a FULLY disorganized post of all the HSAU lore I can think of. There is a clear bias toward Ranboo here

- This is where I justify Rageboo - Anyway he and Technoblade are a Ragebound Derse dreamer Dancestor pair (Ranboo's a Maid, Techno's a Sylph) - There's at least four sessions at play -- the first is DTeam+Badlands maybe and was the creator of the universe w/ the initial L'Manberg session (roughly based around some of the S1 major actors) - And THAT session is scratched to generate the NLM session (roughly based around actors more significant in S2) - (how that division is drawn is... it is still complicated the only ones ik for SURE are that Wilbur Eret and Technoblade r in the former session and Tubbo and Ranboo are in the latter. Have not decided which one Tmmy is in. I wanted him to be in the same one as Tubbo bc he's a Time player to Tubbo's Space but it may not make sense? But it also might?) - The fourth session is another completed one: it's Philza's null session. Philza is a Doom player and he's beaten the session and now is hanging out in the cluster w/ everyone else - DreamXD is a First Guardian - The genetic sequence for DreamXD is written predominantly by Ranboo who does so much more consciously than usual - Especially laid groundwork via the Amnesiac (Ranboo as Techno's ancestor) who kind of went off the rails chasing cherubs which he thought he was somehow fatewise involved with bc he's a mutant red like Techno but he's also. Smth went Extra wrong so half his blood is the requisite candyred and half is the original lime - Ranboo who plays Sburb through related reasons ended up put in The Cherub Box for the first half of his life. It fucks him up - Then he gets to troll society which also fucks him up - So he has a propensity bc of those combined experiences for hiding parts of himself, compartmentalizing, caginess, trusting nobody except himself and not even himself for that matter, privately being Not A Fan of societal expectations in general, trying to look palatable anyway, and also sitting alone in his room. You could say he's. You could say he's Homestu - The Bloodgod (Techno as Ranboo's ancestor) fought Dream (fully realized cherub) and Won. He got the horrorterrors retroactively in the brains of every iteration of him for his troubles - this is what allows Techno who plays Sburb to get the survivors out of the scratched LM1 session into the NLM session after Wilbur scratches the initial session on Nov 16th though so - Dream is a cherub btw that's kind of relevant to the above - Ranb and Techno r trolls (as mentioned above, they're lime/mutant candyred w/ Ranb having the blood weirdness and Techno bein just str8 red. Them) - Unsure abt jack anything else - To go back 2 Tubbo. So you know how the Space player is traditionally assisted by the Knight in breeding the genesis frog. - Tubbo's classpect is the Knight of Space that man is on his own - Whatever happens in Tubbo's session, Tubbo is basically left functionally to breed the frog on his own - While YOU were FUCKING AROUND going into RETIREMENT and DOING FETCH QUESTS, TUBBO was TRYING TO WIN THE FUCKING GAME - He ends up ghosting Doom. This is a thing you can do I chedked the fucking literature okay ghosting is not definitionally just your opposite aspect it's just acting your aspect in a way that outwardly (intentionally or not) evokes another Tubbo ghosts Doom - Dream and Tubbo both Prospit dreamers btw I only just realized this but yeah - Niki Life player also - Quackity Hope player - I don't remember what the meta was for this one but Wilbur Light - Oh and the literal only land I have worked out is Ranboo's which is LoRaO (Land of Rivers and Obsidian) - Anyway Techno has a whole Sylph of Rage arc he does it with his session he does it in NLM he may godtier in the equivalent of the Butcher Army? - If there is an Alternia/Beforus similarity w/ the sessions here Techno is definitely on the Alternia one. He's having a time - He also has to deal with (and be. I am an apologist but. There's a reason I classpected him the way I did) the concept of Sylph (derogatory) of Rage (derogatory) - Idk what his land is. I could make a potato joke but I feel that's low hanging fruit. Smth to do with the Arctic maybe... - He's definitely one of the first 2 be in contact with Philza also - I also Only have his and Ranboo's typing quirks worked out bc of course:

For Ranb: You are si imultaneously unsu ure and also ki inda wi ith a tende ency to double do own on thi ings, and you don't te end to use end pu unctuation a who ole lo ot, really, you ju ust ha ave a lo ot of qualifyi ing to do ju ust all the ti ime, and a te endency also to li ike, ra amble, ki inda. (simultaneously unsure and also kinda with a tendency to double down on things, and you don't tend to use end punctuation a whole lot, really, you just have a lot of qualifying to do, just, all the time, and a tendency also to like, ramble, kinda.) (when he starts Actually Punctuating His Sentences yk he means Business) For Techno: You tend to speak in a [PIG+++] kindaa drawlingg mannerr, withh thee occasionall Weirdd Emphasiss. forr thee effectt, yknoww. forr thee Brandd evenn

- peerpressure be like [have letter doubling quirks] - OH also. As ancestors Ranboo and Techno (or the Amnesiac and the Bloodgod as it were) both wrote Troll Art of War in their respective timelines

#three dont look

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khtrinityftw · 4 years

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The Good, The Bad, and the Cards - A Brief Look Back at KH: Chain of Memories

It’s been 15 years since Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was released, and while I adore this game, I want to look back and highlight 7 specific elements worthy of praise that still hold up to this day and 7 specific elements that aren’t so good and helped derail the KH franchise going forward, the “Franchise Original Sins” as it were. So without further ado, here they are:

Positive: The Card Map System - I really love the usage of cards when it comes to exploring each world. Through the different cards, you get to create your own customized dungeon to crawl through, and the incentive to battle in order to collect cards you need to progress further in the level is a good one.

Negative: The Card Battle System - Unfortunately, using cards in combat isn’t done nearly as smoothly, and they complicate battles way more than they should. This is especially bad in the original GBA version of the game, where the cards are hard to make out on the small screen and the tiny, cramped arenas that you fight in make it all too easy to get backed into a corner while trying to shuffle through or reload your deck. This game could’ve done better.

Positive: Sora’s Story - The main scenario of the game is superbly written by Daisuke Watanabe. Like I said in my video review, he took what he was given, which was virtually nothing, and turned it into something. Sora’s character has never been explored in as much depth as it is here, with all of his raw strengths and weaknesses on full display. His bond of friendship with Donald and Goofy, his strong romantic interest in Kairi, his tortured clashing with “Riku”, his animosity toward Organization XIII, and the interactions he has with Namine toward the end are all handled perfectly. It really reminds you of just why you love this guy.

Negative: Riku’s Story - Reverse/Rebirth, otoh, doesn’t hold up so well. It tries its best to give Riku good character development, but too much of it is focused on practically everyone but Riku, the lack of anything occurring in the Disney worlds means that the story feels too light on content, and the conclusion Riku’s character is ultimately brought to contradicts what was established in the original KH and only creates further problems down the line. What’s more, this was the start of forcing Riku down our throats as the deuteragonist of the series, which is a role he was never suited for and that he only gets worse in overtime. So yeah, not a fan.

Positive: Organization XIII - Primarily the members introduced in Sora’s story; Lexaeus and Zexion are more useful as plot devices than as characters. Not only are Axel, Larxene, Vexen and Marluxia all excellent villains in their own ways, but the villainous arc they are part of is the best-written one in any KH game. Watching them work off each other and against each other in this dark but easy to follow political intrigue plot is one of the game’s highest points.

Negative: The Riku Replica - Don’t get me wrong, this was a decent character with a decent arc, but the execution was way too over-the-top and overstayed its welcome. Between Sora and Riku’s story, you have to fight this asshole six times! That’s just ridiculous for any boss in any game! And then there’s what the whole “replica” concept he introduced was used for in subsequent games, since Nomura just loves taking the simple and making it convoluted.

Positive: The GBA Graphics - This is one of the best-looking GBA games ever, hands-down. The fact that full cutscenes with PS2-style graphics were actually able to fit on the cartridge is simply incredible, and Square should really be commended for pushing the system to its absolute limits.

Negative: Console Spread - COM marked the first time that a KH game was put on an entirely different console than before, being a GBA game released and set in between two PS2 games. This wasn’t too much of a problem back then, since COM was only needed to fully understand the purposefully confusing prologue of KH2 and it ended up getting a PS2 remake anyway. But after a while, the sheer amount of consoles that KH spin-off games that are necessary to understand KH3′s story with became ridiculous. At this point, the only way you can actually get the full KH series is to own a PS4. If you don’t, then you’re out of luck.

Positive: Disney Expansion - Because this game re-uses Disney characters and worlds from the original KH, Daisuke Watanabe got to expand on things that weren’t really delved into in that game. We get more on Aladdin’s character, more on Alice’s character, more on Peter Pan and Wendy’s characters, more on Belle and the Beast’s characters and relationship…and perhaps most notable of all, more on Jiminy Cricket’s character. The Disney worlds and characters that we saw in KH are all enriched by their memory-based appearances.

Negative: An Influx of OCs - The original KH only had four original characters: Sora, Riku, Kairi and Ansem (five if you are counting Xemnas from Final Mix). COM introduced nine new ones: Namine, Axel, Larxene, Marluxia, Vexen, Lexaeus, Zexion, Riku Replica, and DiZ. Again, this wasn’t a problem with the game back then, especially seeing as two-thirds of those characters get axed before the game is through. But it started the trend of Nomura introducing way too much OCs that come to overshadow all the Disney and FF characters. Worse still, he refuses to truly let any of them go, as all six of those dead characters end up coming back to life later on, as do the two who went on to perish in KH2. This results in an overly cluttered canvas by KH3, to the point where no FF characters can appear.

Positive: Set-up for KH2 - This game’s existence did for KH2 what the later Dream Drop Distance should have done for KH3 but didn’t: it effectively set the stage for the following game. It gave all of the necessary foreshadowing for things like Nobodies, the Organization’s true goal, Xemnas, Roxas, Twilight Town, Namine being Kairi’s Nobody, and DiZ being the true Ansem while the Ansem we knew being an impostor. It also removed five members of the Organization from the board, with the sixth slated for removal in KH2′s prologue, which left the villain roster at a much more manageable number for the game’s main scenario. COM truly feels like the middle installment of a trilogy: the shit that happens in it actually matters.

Negative: Too Much Rehash from KH1 - There is so much from the original KH that is on repeat in COM. Beyond the same Disney worlds and characters being re-used, the stories in those worlds and with those characters match the original KH’s beat for beat, except with themes of memory inserted in and all context to the larger narrative removed so that they feel like filler. Both recycling from the first KH and Disney world visits being filler were not so bad in this game, but when it kept happening throughout the rest of the series, players grew sick of it. Furthermore, beats from the first KH still transpire in the main storyline of the game: Namine is in a role like Kairi’s, the Riku Replica is in a role like Riku’s, Marlxuia is in a role like both Maleficent and Ansem while Ansem himself comes back for more fun darkness times in Riku’s story, and we get sequences of Sora being separated from Donald and Goofy (this time it’s flipped and he’s the one who turns on them), the trio making an “All for One, One for All” promise as they put their hands on one another, and Sora making a promise with Namine that has Kairi’s good luck charm at the center of it. It’s all a little too much familiarity.

Positive: Atmosphere - As much as this game rehashes the previous one, it has a markedly different tone. It’s darker, more foreboding, more eerie, more psychological and uncertain. The white walls of Castle Oblivion and the creepy music playing as you go through them floor by floor really helps to sell this, as does a lot of the dialogue, memory-based insights into the characters’ hearts, and twisted machinations of the villains. It makes COM, well, memorable.

Negative: Convoluted Writing - That’s right, it all starts here. The writing for the original KH was smart enough to not actively dwell on the more ponderous elements of its story, keeping the narrative to a simple presentation while leaving the deeper lore as stuff for the player to think and speculate about it on their own. But in this game, it starts getting pushed to the forefront. Memory and darkness are the central themes of Sora and Riku’s story respectively, and yet neither of them quite make sense the way they’re explored. Memory is repeatedly said to be an aspect of the heart, to the point where removing it altogether would shatter a person’s heart completely. Except that this is not only confusing to basic logic that says memory is an aspect of the mind, but it gets contradicted by the following game, KH2, where it states that Nobodies that have no hearts act upon the memories of when they had hearts. Then we have Namine’s powers and how it relates to memories, which is nebulously defined here and ends up ballooning to ludicrous godlike degrees in order to make certain plot turns happen in later games, and you end up retroactively questioning why she didn’t just fuck with the Organization’s memories and shatter them in order to escape captivity all by herself.

Meanwhile, darkness is completely rewritten so that it can be a good thing if Riku isn’t afraid of it and uses it for a good cause...except that this is literally what he did in the first KH and it corrupted him. Darkness was unambiguously bad and something that should not be used in that game, but now it’s being revamped just to make Riku into a special snowflake with uber-awesome darkness powers. Future games continue going back and forth on darkness on whether it’s good, bad or neutral, whether it’s a natural force that needs to co-exist with light or whether it’s the source of all evil in the universe. And I again must remind you that this is only the start of how convoluted the series gets with its stories! By KH3, the series has become an absolute clusterfuck where nothing really makes sense or amounts to anything. There’s no real depth anymore, just pretentious nonsense that Nomura confuses for depth.

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toaarcan · 5 years

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Sonic X, Sonic Heroes, and IDW, or: How a bad anime from 2004 spoiled a comic from 2019.

Now, I haven’t been following IDW Sonic all that closely. I get regular updates from Nemesis via Discord, and additional info from some of the Tumblrs I follow that are invested in it, but I don’t really have a desire to touch it myself. Here’s why.

There’s a multitude of reasons for this. Starting with the background of Sonic Forces wasn’t really a good place to begin from, and being based on present-day game lore in general was always going to hurt it, mainly because SEGASonic canon is currently a confusing mess of retcons brought on by Iizuka taking the J.K. Rowling approach.

Wait, no, he’s just saying stupid shit that contradicts previous canon, not trying to score woke points and hoping nobody notices the frankly terrible stereotypes and TERF tweets. Iizuka is taking the Greg Farshtey approach.

Added, as anyone that’s had experience with my opinions will tell you, I started falling out of love with Ian Flynn’s writing somewhere around Issue 200, and moved to outright dislike during Mecha Sally, and to make matters worse I started noticing that some of the flaws in the 200-247 era were also present in the 160-199 era, retroactively making those harder to go back to.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I kept up with Archie for the SatAM cast. SatAM reruns back in 2004 were my Sonic, moreso than anything else, and even now I still have way more attachment to those two seasons of animation than I do to most other aspects of the franchise, warts and all. So Archie providing me with additional content for said characters was a major draw for me. I’d generally put up with a lot just to get myself more SatAM content.

That in itself is a large part of why I fell off the Archie train during Mecha Sally. The entirety of the SatAM cast were removed from the regular lineup, just leaving three SEGA characters with their personalities stunted, even if that didn’t make sense in-universe. But that’s a discussion for another day.

So being written by someone whom I no longer enjoyed the writing of, set in a mess of a canon with a thoroughly shite game as the main basis, without the cast I read the previous comics for gave me little reason to invest in IDW Sonic. It wasn’t for me, I’d just keep reading Transformers and move on.

Then MTMTE/LL ended with a heart-twister and Ex-RID ended with a giant Unicron-shaped fart, and the new comic is dull as fucking dishwater and started by killing off one of my favourites, who was also one of the franchise’s confirmed LGBT characters. So now IDW is getting none of my money. Which is good because I’m broke.

Tangents aside, my lack of interest wasn’t something set in stone. If it turned out that the comic was actually really good, then sure, I’d try it. I was up for being proven wrong. But so far, I haven’t felt compelled by the responses from the internet. If anything I’ve been more turned off.

I could talk about how zombies are really fucking boring. I could talk about how SEGA’s recent confusion over what to do with Amy has combined with Ian’s need to include a Sally-esque character to make IDW Amy into Sally Lite. I could talk about how Ian seemingly fundamentally misunderstood everything that was cool about Neo Metal Sonic and somehow managed to reduce him to a boring Eggman minion in an arc where Eggman was out of action due to amnesia… But I won’t.

Instead I’m going to talk about how the comic has done something that would legitimately make me think twice about picking it up even if the FF were to debut tomorrow.

Yeah, I would pass up a SatAM fix because of this, that’s how much this ticks me off.

Now, I presume that if you’re reading this, you have a favourite Sonic character. And you probably feel pretty strongly about how your favourite character is portrayed. If they get a bad run in a game or two then you probably get a little salty about that. Tails and Knuckles fans in particular, as of late, seem to be the ones getting the short end.

Well, my favourite character in the entire franchise is Emerl the Gizoid. I will take Gemerl as a worthy substitute, they’re basically the same character. And the comics have been doing them dirty since the Archie reboot.

(Sidenote: I will be referring to Emerl with male pronouns from this point on. The Maria-soul thing isn’t as widely known as I’d like it to be, so I’m going to compromise for the sake of keeping the focus on the actual point)

However, not everything about this can be laid at the feet of Ian Flynn. Arguably his portrayal of said character is merely a symptom of a long-running issue that has plagued Sonic storytelling for roughly 15-16 years now.

But before we get into that, let’s get into something important: Why Emerl is my favourite Sonic character.

Part 1: Emerl in Sonic Battle, or “How I learned to stop worrying and love the Gizoid”.

This game doesn’t get enough love.

Now, I totally understand why it doesn’t get enough love. There are game design choices, like the grinding and the repetitiveness of the story mode that really drag it down, and because of that, Battle can become a slow-going and tedious experience, and that’s a real shame, because the story that’s hidden in this game is a thing of beauty.

Like most Sonic games from the 2000s, this game introduces a new character to join Sonic’s list of friends. Unlike the games that aren’t SA2 and Sonic Rush, this new character is actually good (This is hyperbole, Omega, Silver, and Shade were fine too).

Emerl enters the story as a mute, barely-functional robot that doesn’t do much of anything for a while, and only seems to come to life when Sonic locates it and attacks it. However, as the robot absorbs more Chaos Emeralds, slowly a personality starts to form, largely pieced together from other characters’ traits.

Emerl, as he is dubbed, is initially childlike and naive, but as he grows he develops a sassy streak, and his speech becomes a lot more developed. Maturity sets in, as Emerl grapples with his own nature, particularly the legacy he carries from the ARK, and Shadow’s ongoing turmoil with regards to the whole “Living Weapon” deal. Ultimately he becomes a hero, following in the footsteps of his mentor, parental figure, and closest friend, Sonic.

That’s right, Sonic, not Cream, is Emerl’s closest friend. We’ll get to that.

But this heart-warming story of Sonic becoming a dad for a robot doesn’t have a happy ending. Despite Shadow and Rouge finding a way to neutralise Emerl’s destructive Gizoid programming, Eggman has a way to reactivate it anyway, driving Emerl into a berserk rampage. This is kind of the one sticking point I have with the game’s plot, Eggman shouldn’t have been able to do this after Shadow and Rouge neutralised Emerl.

Additionally, while Emerl was on the ARK getting Maria’s soul crammed into him, Gerald also added a self-destruct mechanism that would trigger if he ever went Ultimate again.

So with Emerl quite literally exploding with all the power of the Chaos Emeralds, but his destructive programming forcing him to turn Eggman’s latest Death Star knockoff on Mobius/Earth/Sonic’s World, Sonic races up to confront his mecha-child, and things take a turn for the Old Robot Yeller.

In a moment that really deserves more attention, Sonic confronts his own child on the bridge of a space station, while Emerl is running on the power of the Chaos Emeralds and outputting more energy than he can physically take, and they fight. In the space of thirty seconds, they have a ten-round knock-down, drag-out brawl, and at the end, Sonic stands triumphant. Without using a single transformation. Yeah, that’s how powerful this guy is, that’s not travel speed, that’s combat speed. Looking at you, Death Battle.

It’s not really clear whether Sonic outright defeats Ultimate Emerl, or just survives long enough for his opponent to reach his limit and self-destruct, but the end result is the same. Sonic cradles a robot that became his own child over the course of the past few weeks, someone he raised from a baby-like state into a mature and heroic individual, and Emerl looks up at him and asks “Sonic… am I going to die?” And despite Sonic desperately trying to get him to keep it together, Not only does Emerl die, but he’s aware that the end is coming, and bids farewell to all of his friends as Sonic pleads with him to hold on. Shadow is equally distraught, his only friend with a connection to the ARK, someone he can call a brother, someone who carries the soul of his deceased sister within him, is dead.

Emerl: “Sonic I don’t feel so good.”

Like it’s canon that Eggman basically murdered Sonic’s kid.

And goddamnit this ending hits me hard. It frustrates me that Eggman was able to pull a means to drive Emerl into his Ultimate freakout mode out of his arse, but other than that, it’s so gutwrenching, I love it.

Gamma’s story from SA1 gets a lot of praise on the Internet, but for me, this is even better. It’s like Gamma’s story, but if Gamma was actually central to the plot of the game and the characters other than Amy gave a shit about him, and gave a shit about him for longer than a single cutscene, after which they are never mentioned again. Hell, due to Chaos Gamma being a thing, Gamma gets more love from the other characters in Battle than he does in SA1.

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.

Part 2: (Sonic) Anime was a Mistake, or: “Sonic X ruins everything.”

I’ve made my dislike of this anime quite clear in the past. The characters are flanderized, Sonic is a B-lister in his own damn show, the villains are weaksauce or boring or both, the plot is only remotely close to good when its cribbing from two videogames which told the stories in question better, and for the first two seasons the entire show actually revolves around not Sonic, but the least relatable audience surrogate ever made. The third season would continue to include him, but shove him (And everyone else) to the side in favour of a Pokemon whose only move was “Flashback”, making audiences the world over question why he was even there in the first place.

Oh, and it also near-singlehandedly destroyed the thin shreds of character development that Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Eggman had received in Sonic Adventure 2.

All four of these characters had been significantly enriched by the then most recent console game. Eggman had been revealed to be motivated by an admiration for his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, but in the same game learned that Gerald had lost his marbles and programmed the ARK to smash into the planet and kill everyone on it, probably including his surviving family, i.e. little baby Ivo Robotnik. Gerald betrayed Eggman posthumously, and it’s clear from Eggman’s interactions with Tails during the credits of the game that this is giving him a lot to think about.

Knuckles is a weird case because most of his characterisation in SA2 is conveyed via… the lyrics to his rap music. Yes, really. He gets minor growth through the cutscenes, most notably in his decision to shatter the Master Emerald early on. Having already reassembled it once after it was broken in SA1, he’s now confident that he can do it again, so is willing to break it to prevent Eggman or Rouge stealing it. Via the rap lyrics, however (Yes I just wrote that), we also learn that Knuckles is slowly warming up to Sonic, gaining a greater respect for him, that he is more in-touch with his history and ancestors after SA1 (Though fortunately not in a Ken Penders way), and that he’s also struggling with feelings for Rouge, a plot element that went completely out of the window after this game.

Tails and Amy, however, get it the worst, as both went through arcs in SA1 that are followed up on and expanded in SA2. Amy had come to the conclusion that she didn’t need to rely on Sonic for everything, and that she would make him respect her as a hero in her own right. And while Amy is clearly in way over her head throughout the events of SA2, she still makes a significant difference, not only freeing Sonic from his cell on Prison Island, allowing Tails’ invasion to be a distraction and stealing a keycard to facilitate it, but of course, she later saves the world by motivating Shadow to join the fight to stop the ARK drop.

Tails had a similar plot, about learning to believe in himself as a hero, without having to rely on Sonic, and in SA2 he gets to prove it, not only partaking in the same rescue operation as Amy and fighting Eggman on even footing, but effectively taking command of the heroes and becoming their new leader, and for the first time, Sonic defers to him.

And then Sonic X came along and fucked it all up.

Eggman became a clownish antagonist with no semblance of nuance, and he actually got off the easiest.

Knuckles became a loud, dimwitted loner who got tricked by Eggman constantly, which would go on to be his personality for the rest of the franchise, ultimately culminating in the travesty against all sense that was Boom Knuckles.

Tails was reduced to a wimpy taxi driver, incapable of doing anything without his giant mecha plane to sit in. This was largely exacerbated by the presence of Donut Steele, who usurped his role as Sonic’s best friend and sidekick for two seasons, a problem which only got worse in the third season when Donut Steele suddenly became a genius inventor too, encroaching even more into Tails’ territory. Tails did get himself some more focus in S3, but only to make googly eyes at the Pokemon, a role which frankly could’ve gone to literally anyone else and would have made no difference on the plot. I would say that Tails being involved in a romance story at all is weird, but given the comics and Boom the weirdest thing about this latest tragic love story for the kid is that the Pokemon was actually close to his own age, because outside of this it really does seem like Tails goes for older ladies. Though she did turn into an adult at the end so I guess that counts?

But Amy arguably got the worst of it. Not only was her crowning moment in SA2 taken away from her and given to Donut Steele, but the poor girl had her promising character arc cut short and replaced with an obsessive, unhealthy fixation on Sonic, combined with a violent temper and an eagerness to smash anything that displeased her, Sonic included, with a giant hammer. Her admiration and crush on Sonic were warped into her being a possessive, mean-spirited stalker, whom only got away with it because she was an anime girl and therefore it was cute rather than creepy.

I want to take the time at this point to stress that stalking is not okay, under any circumstances. A girl obsessively following an older guy and threatening him and everyone around him with violent assault if they ever so much as imply that he isn’t interested in her is not cute, it means it’s time for a restraining order. Sonamy is not cute.

Now that I’ve swatted that particular hornet’s nest with a cricket bat, let’s move on!

I’ve always found it ironic that, despite being the adaptation with the most oversight from SEGA and Sonic Team, and the most endorsement from them too, Sonic X had easily the worst characterisation of any of the shows at the time. But, for all its faults, I can’t blame everything that went down in the aftermath on it. It had a comrade-in-arms. Mediocrely-written arms.

Part 3: Partner in Crime, or “Sonic Heroes also ruins everything.”

Sonic Heroes has a lot to answer for. And I mean a lot. It was the beginning of the franchise’s obsession with references to the classic games, it codified the really awkward ages for certain characters, and it seemed to be dedicated to completely unpicking everything established in the Adventure duology.

Shadow’s sudden resurrection is one thing, at least they had the graces to include a means to preserve his sacrifice via having him be an android, the blame for that not taking should be laid at the feet of his own game.

But the rest of the cast? Ohhh boy. Sonic’s still fine, he didn’t change much in the Adventure games, but then there’s Tails. Despite all the development he went through in SA1, in this game he needs to turn to Sonic when Eggman returns, and honestly this whole setup could’ve been fixed if Tails sought Sonic out not for the sake of having him lead the charge, but rather simply to recruit him into the counterattack he was already planning. Nevertheless, throughout the rest of the game Tails is almost as wimpy as his X counterpart, not helped by the voicework he’s given. No offense to William Corkery, who was probably like six when he recorded his lines, but this what you get when you choose actors via nepotism, rather than talent. But at least he does something.

How about Knuckles? As the other side of his derailment, Knuckles just turns up in this game, buddy-buddy with the characters he was only just starting to warm up to before, and blatantly not caring about the Master Emerald until Rouge mentions she’s going to steal it at the end. This will combine with his becoming a dumbass in Sonic X and become basically his entire character for… ever. Even in Forces, where he’s supposed to be doing slightly better as the leader of the resistance… but he’s a dumbass, and even Ian Flynn, who kept Knuckles as competent and intelligent in the Archie comics (Making the best version of Knuckles we’ve had in forever), kept this ongoing in the IDW comic. The Forces prequel portrays him as deciding to become leader of the Resistance (To an empire that hasn’t actually formed yet) purely to be a glory hound, and then goes on to establish that he was basically a figurehead while the real work was done by Amy, of all people.

And speaking of Amy…

Yeah, poor Amy is basically her Sonic X counterpart. But worse. I didn’t think that was possible, but at least X’s Amy seems to care about her friends. In Heroes, we’re treated to an equally violent and stalkerish Amy, who ostensibly starts searching out Sonic because he’s implicated in the abduction of Cream and Big’s pets, but when they actually catch up to him, Amy clean forgets why she is looking for him in the first place and tries to force him to marry her. Despite being twelve.

Y’know when Amy said she wanted to marry Sonic in SA2, she was joking, right?

This is why I find the idea of Amy being the real leader of the Resistance frankly absurd: Because the only time she led anything, it was a team that consisted of herself, a small child, and a man less intelligent and aware of reality than said small child, and she completely forgot their actual objective the moment she set her eyes on Sonic. Add in an unfortunate stint of very poor eyesight that got less and less understandable with every instance, and we got Amy’s rough personality for the next decade.

While Knuckles mostly stagnated at the same level of stupidity during that time, Tails got worse and worse, losing all of his badass traits with every game, a factor only increased by the “Sonic only” mentality costing him playable status, until he reached his nadir in Forces, cowering in terror from Chaos 0, and crying out to Sonic to save him, despite knowing full-well that Sonic was captured already. Amy, meanwhile, limped along at the same level until about 2014, where it seemed someone at SEGA finally realised that A) Having the only female character you regularly use be a pink-coloured gender-bent version of your male hero whose only function is lusting after said hero doesn’t and shouldn’t fly in this day and age, and B) violent stalkers aren’t cute, and dropped this trait. Unfortunately, this has been more of a lateral move than a fix, as, much like Antoine in the comics, they forgot to give her anything substantial or fitting after she lost her negative traits, leaving her a bland and dull character, and when you’ve had a character be consistent for ten years, even if they were consistently bad, then changing it without cause or warning is still going to be jarring and awkward.

Part 4: Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right, or “Why the fuck did this happen?”

As I said in Part 2, Sonic X was made under heavy oversight from Sonic Team, and was heavily endorsed by them at the same time. There were promos for the show inserted into Sonic Adventure DX, a few episodes were released on GBA cartridges, and it received a long-running comic from Archie that ran alongside the main book, even after the show had ended. Additionally, characters that debuted in games from 2002-2004 were restricted from appearing in Archie’s main book for years afterwards (Which will become relevant later). The third season was commissioned solely off of the response to the first two, and primarily overseas response, hence why the original sub was never aired in Japan.

Sonic X was huge. And with that in mind, it’s plain to see that the portrayals of the characters in Sonic X were intended by SEGA. Yeah, all that horrible characterisation was intended as the vision for the franchise going forwards, and subsequent games were adjusted to match it.

And unfortunately, not only did this have a serious impact on the main cast of the games, but it had an even worse effect on Emerl.

Part 5: Emerl in Sonic X, or “Emerl vs. ‘Emel’”

Sonic X’s original mission statement was to adapt Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Battle. Why they skipped Sonic Heroes, despite Shadow being a major player in Battle’s story, I don’t know.

For whatever reason, the show took a full season to actually get to the first game adaptation, SA1, and instead spent the first 26 episodes on bland episodic “adventures”, in some kind of strange reverse-Isekai series. However, once it got there, the adaptation work was fairly faithful to the source material, which the exception of Donut Steele’s being crammed in to the plot. However, he mostly followed Big around, and since Big was the least involved in the game’s plot, he didn’t disrupt too much.

Sidenote, after 26 episodes of filler, the actual SA1 adaptation only lasted six episodes.

SA2 was likewise only six episodes, but with the exception of Amy’s big scene, it likewise wasn’t too bad. Tails suffered this time around too, which is somewhat surprising since he was mech-dependent in the anime anyway.

After some more filler, which introduced the Chaotix and then did nothing with them, Emerl finally made an appearance, albeit they got his name wrong.

‘Emel’ looks like Emerl, and somewhat works like Emerl, but might as well be completely different. ‘Emel’ stays completely mute for the entire time he’s around, never advancing much beyond Emerl’s initial silent, pre-first Emerald persona. He does get better at fighting, but he’s limited to only absorbing a single skill at once (Except for when he isn’t).

Dispensing with Battle’s interesting, rich, and heart-twisting plot, Sonic X instead has ‘Emel’ linger in ensemble for three episodes, before condensing the entire game’s premise into a two episodes of really bland tournament arc, where Sonic himself doesn’t actually fight and we get two rounds of Donut Steele being a dick to his friend and his father.

‘Emel’ wins the tournament, and is given a Chaos Emerald, and just when you think it might kickstart him becoming an actual character, instead it just drives him insane and he immediately becomes a pathetically weak version of Ultimate Emerl. After kicking the crap out of the entire cast, he is defeated by Cream and Cheese, because even though he can take on Sonic, Knuckles, and Rouge at the same time and win, along with Tails, Amy, Donut Steele and everyone else, he… can’t handle two opponents at once.

This is stupid.

You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about Sonic’s relationship with ‘Emel’, and that’s because he doesn’t have one. The wonderfully-written parental bond that these two characters share in the games is completely excised, and instead the focus is put on Cream. Bare in mind, Cream is so inconsequential to the actual game that she doesn’t even get mentioned individually in Emerl’s dying speech like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow do. Instead she’s just grouped in with Amy.

This is also stupid.

And as a result of this, it means that what is arguable base form Sonic’s most impressive feat just doesn’t happen in the anime, instead Emerl dies because he is lightly kicked a bit by Cream. Yeah, unlike the Advance games, Sonic X’s Cream is not an unstoppable engine of destruction, she’s basically just a small child who can sometimes fly.

Instead of Emerl’s tragic speech and Sonic’s desperate attempts to keep his son alive, we get treated to a prolonged scene of Cream crying over the death of her “friend”, something that is probably meant to tug at heartstrings but doesn’t because Cream’s voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

And Shadow isn’t even there! He doesn’t come back until a third of the way through Season 3, and never meets ‘Emel.’

This is really stupid. And, for those keeping track, that means of Sonic X’s originally commissioned 52 episodes, and the full series run of 78 episodes, a stunning total of seventeen of them were actually adaptations of the games that the series was supposed to focus on, leaving us with 61 episodes of what might as well be filler.

And, unfortunately, that franchise-wide initiative had damning consequences for Emerl.

Part 6: Gemerl and Sonic Advance 3, or: “An incomplete resurrection.”

So, Gemerl. I know his name is apparently G-Merl now but fuck that I’m calling him Gemerl. If the comics can do it then so will I.

Gemerl is the worst thing Eggman has ever done to Sonic. Like, there is no contest. Some of his other schemes might be more destructive and generally evil, but in terms of personal pain inflicted, nothing has topped this.

Eggman salvaged Emerl’s corpse, and brought him back to life as a mindless murderbot under his control. So not only did he kill Sonic’s robo-son, but he also brought him back as a weapon.

Come the conclusion of the game, Gemerl predictably betrays Eggman, steals the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic, and goes on another rampage. I have… headcanons about this fight, but that’s something to worry about later. What’s important is that, once again, Sonic is victorious, and Gemerl’s defeated body plunges into the atmosphere.

Fortunately, Tails is able to bring Emerl back properly this time, presumably using the Chaos shard that was left over at the end of Battle’s finale. So, it’s all a happy ending, right? Sonic has his child back, Shadow has his connection to his history restored, and Emerl is alive and well, right?

Wrong.

See, the vile spectre of Sonic X rears its ugly head once more, and sabotages this conclusion. Gemerl doesn’t return to Sonic, in fact we never see him reunite with his father. Instead, Sonic X’s version has enough clout now to take precedence, so Gemerl is now Cream’s playmate.

Bear in mind that Emerl’s idea of a fun game is all-out combat against his friends, and Cream doesn’t like fighting (Even if she’s really good at it in Advance 2 and 3).

And then he never shows up again. Even when Cream is part of the game’s plot, like in Rush or Generations, he’s not there, and most egregiously, in Sonic Chronicles, where Cream is not only an active player in the plot, but so are Gizoids, the creators of said Gizoids are the main antagonists, and Emerl himself is mentioned… Gemerl is not there.

But he did make it into the comics, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

Part 7: Embargos, knock-offs, and misused tropes, or: “Ian Flynn dun goofed.”

For a long while, Emerl/Gemerl was barred from the Archie comics, due to the Sonic X embargo, and when it was lifted, he didn’t appear until the reboot. We did, however, get a suspiciously similar substitute in the form of Shard.

Shard was the original Metal Sonic, but when he was brought back and rebuilt for the Secret Freedom arc, he was given a colour scheme ostensibly derived from Metal Sonic 3.0, but one shared with Gemerl, and a personality that was a lot like a watered-down version of Emerl’s own.

On some level I can understand Ian’s decision to bring back Metal Sonic v2.5, rather than use the character that seems to have been an inspiration for this new incarnation in some way. He’d need a fully-formed Emerl, necessitating a skip over the whole story, since there wasn’t room for an adaptation during the Mecha Sally arc that the Secret Freedom story was framed within. Heck, for all we know, the similarities between them may simply be a pretty sizeable coincidence.

But then the reboot happened and Gemerl finally joined the comic cast. And to say it was underwhelming would be an understatement.

You’ll notice that I said “Gemerl” rather than “Emerl”, because his entire story was indeed skipped. The events of Sonic Battle and Sonic Advance 3 had both happened already. This wasn’t Ian’s decision, as far as we know, his intention was for the comic to start over from the beginning. However, due to the interference of Paul Kaminski, who wanted a softer reboot, Ian was forced to fill the characters’ active histories with a large chunk of the games’ stories. Battle and Advance 3 were among those that had already happened, so Emerl made cameos in both incarnations via flashback… which unfortunately led to a plot hole.

See, Advance 3 and Sonic Unleashed are rather difficult to keep in the same continuity, because both share a common plot element: The world breaking into seven pieces.

For a long while, it was generally assumed that the handheld games and console titles were only semi-canon to each other. This avoided the awkward question of “If the Gaias were already there, why didn’t they emerge when Eggman broke the planet in Advance 3?”

Ian shoved them blatantly into the same continuity, and gave no attempt to explain what was different about the Advance 3 world-break compared to the Gaia incident, which served as the backbone to the reboot’s three year long Shattered World Arc. Why didn't the Gaias wake up during Advance 3? Because that's now a question we have to ask of the comics' world.

When Gemerl finally showed up doing something other than yard work for Vanilla (Despite allegedly being Cream’s friend, Cream spends all her time with the rest of the cast, and Gemerl is basically Vanilla’s maid), it was to get effortlessly dispatched by a brainwashed Mega Man with a terrible name in the extremely lacklustre Worlds Unite event.

This one was more than a little bit of a slap in the face, considering that Emerl and Mega Man are very similar in concept- robots that can copy the abilities of other characters- but Emerl is demonstrably more powerful. Now, if Ian had established that Gemerl had been nerfed when he was rebuilt, either by Eggman or by Tails, that would be fine. But he didn’t. In fact, Gemerl is given the title bubble “Super Gizoid”, implying that he’s stronger than a regular Gizoid.

Worlds Unite is generally pretty bad for having its corrupted heroes easily curbstomp every other character around, to the point that the only thing that can stop them is each other, but in Gemerl’s case it really serves no purpose.

This is the only thing that he actually does in Worlds Unite. He shows up to get beaten up and make Mega Man look stronger. That’s it.

This is something that TV Tropes refers to as “The Worf Effect”, a trope wherein an established powerful character is defeated easily by a new character, in order to demonstrate the latter’s power. Now, there’s nothing wrong with using this trope, but please note that I said establishedpowerful character, which Gemerl wasn’t.

At the point that this comic released, Gemerl’s last appearance in any Sonic media was over ten years prior. None of the comic’s intended target audience would remember him, and they wouldn’t know why defeating him was impressive. And this was, in addition, a terrible way to introduce him to new fans. Though the worst part is easily that this was unnecessary. Mega Man had already defeated everyone else, and had established his power pretty well just on them, and he was about to get removed from play permanently in the next issue. There was really no reason to throw Gemerl under the bus for this.

He made one more appearance in the event, getting controlled by the Zeti along with every other robot, and after that he got bopped on the head and just flew away.

Later, he’d make another appearance in the Panic in the Sky arc, and while his portrayal was far from the worst thing about Panic in the Sky, it only adds to the issues caused by the previous showing.

Gemerl makes one appearance, and promptly gets pinned down by the Witchcarters and Team Hooligan. Bear in that one of those groups are the joke villains who nobody takes seriously, and the other are a gang that was defeated by Tails before he met Sonic.

Archie Gemerl was a character who only existed to lose to villains in a vain attempt to make them look better, and that’s legitimately all Ian ever did with him, which makes me wonder whether he disliked the character. And it didn’t even make the villains look good, when you think about it. For anybody that was actually the intended audience for this book, Gemerl had no significance. He was just a robot that got beat up all the time. But for anyone like me, who does remember the games he appeared in, it stands out, not as good writing, but as a blatant narrative device and misused trope.

In this situation, I would simply rather Gemerl never appeared in Archie. At all. If Ian wasn’t going to give him time to shine, or at the very least be an adequate member of the supporting cast, he shouldn’t have used him at all.

Part 8: A Fresh False Start, or: “Wait, how did this get worse?!”

And now we arrive at IDW.

The one nice thing I can say about Archie Gemerl is that at least his personality was mostly on point. He read like a generally accurate take on the character that Emerl was at the end of Battle, which is what he’s supposed to be.

The same cannot be said for IDW.

In the pages of IDW, Gemerl acts like the most generic robot. He speaks in emotionless, stilted sentences with little in the way of actual grammar, leaving him to read like a poor man’s Soundwave, or Soundwave in one of those comics where the writer can’t decide whether they want him to speak normally or adopt his speech pattern from the G1 cartoon, so they just sort of do both.

Emerl pretty much never talked like this, as far as I can recall. His speech development is much more reminiscent of a child learning words, and the only time when he did adopt a more robotic speech pattern, it was a clue that he was slipping back into his destructive programming. He only spoke like a generic robot when he was in mindless destroyer mode.

He gets thrown for a loop by a simple logic flaw, unable to reconcile “Protect Cream and Vanilla” with “Don’t kill the zombots”, and has to be talked out of killing everything around him, when the entire point of Gerald’s modifications to the Gizoid was to make him a bringer of hope rather than destruction, and give him a compassionate heart.

The part of Battle’s story where Cream imparts a pacifistic mindset doesn’t frame her as being right. In that part of the game, they are cornered and under attack by hostile but ultimately mindless drones, and when she convinces Emerl to stop fighting, he almost dies. It’s Cream that learns the lesson there, that sometimes fighting is okay.

This character is already compassionate, he shouldn’t need to be talked into not killing the zombots by a small child, nor should he need her to point out that they’re innocent people who have been made this way by Eggman, because he was made into a killing machine by Eggman twice, and the first time he did die because of it. The character that lay dying in Sonic’s arms, scared and bidding his last goodbyes to his loved ones shouldn’t be the one experiencing this struggle when Omega is also in this arc.

That’s it, really. He’s not Gemerl. He’s a second, less goofy Omega. And it boggles my mind that, despite getting Gemerl’s character, if not his combat abilities, down almost perfectly in Archie, Ian is now subjecting us to this travesty.

Like with the Archie example above, therein lies the crux of why the steady decline of Emerl/Gemerl that began with Sonic X is pushing me away from IDW: I don’t want to read Ian’s take on this character, because, to me, No Gemerl is better than Badly-Written Gemerl,

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, either. Way back in 2016, when I complained about Ian’s portrayal of Gemerl in Panic in the Sky, I said that the way he handled characters that I liked tended to make them the least likeable parts of the stories he wrote. As well as stating my dislike for his handling of Gemerl, I also stated that I used to really like Fiona Fox, moreso in concept than in execution, but under Ian’s pen she was largely an insufferable antagonist, little more than a trophy to make his pet recolour look better, and almost every story she was in only added to the “List of reasons she needs to stop lying to herself and just start the redemption arc already”. Additionally, I said that I didn’t want to see him bring back Neo Metal Sonic or Mephiles in any context, and we got the former, and it was exactly as bad as I thought it would be.

So, that’s basically why I don’t want to read IDW. That’s why, even if the aspect that was a big sticking point for me back when the comic launched was to be undone soon, I still probably wouldn’t pick it up. Because I don’t want to see my favourite Sonic character continue to be written badly by a guy that should know better, and has done better in the past.

If he were simply screwing up Gemerl’s personality the first time he wrote him, I would file it away under the same category as “Emel”, but the fact that he’s done better before, in a book where he had greater restrictions on what he could do with the characters, really settles this as an interest-killer for me.

Well done, Mr. Flynn. I legitimately didn’t think you could make me actually miss SEGA’s tighter control, but you somehow managed it. I would be impressed if it weren’t so sad.

#Sonic #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic X #IDW Sonic #Archie Sonic #Emerl #Gemerl #Emerl the Gizoid #Gemerl the Gizoid #Critical #Sonic Heroes

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thenightling · 5 years

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The many things wrong with The Dreaming issue 5 (2019) ...I will not be kind...

Warning! It’s long!

1. Let us begin with the stupid Trumpisms. I feel like Simon Spurrier thinks he has to punish or “re-educate” us poor, ignorant, Americans for electing Donald Trump. It appears that no one has broken it to him yet that Trump lost the popular vote by over three million voters. So why are we being punished because we’re stuck with him? We’re already resisting as best we can or does he not watch the news?

There’s no way in Hell the color palette for this cover was an accident or happenstance. For you non-Americans, the Republican (Trump) Party have a popular symbol. An elephant that is usually drawn in red, white, and blue.

2. The ugly and immature symbolism. The Dreaming is bleeding color! (says the plot synopsis from the solicitations and DC Vertigo’s Facebook page). Without diversity, without color, The Dreaming becomes bland, all white, and dreams die. Do you know where I first saw this same literal story? Rainbow Bite in 1985! Not only is it condescending and lacks the charm of the symbolism from The Sandman: Overture but it’s stolen, whether accidental or not, this is from a kids show from when i was a toddler in the 80s!

3. ‘Y’all.” I know Judge Gallows is meant to be a cliche, old west style judge. But this is like watching a 1970s Doctor Who Brit actor put on what they think is an American accent. The y’all(s) feel forced, and that takes a lot when it’s not said out loud. He sounds like the damn chicken lawyer from Futurama.

The accent, it burns!

4. “His creator.” It’s like Simon both knows and doesn’t know the original lore, all at once, it’s baffling. As Lucien’s dying it looks like he’s half-reverted to a raven form. @missghostlymoonshadow you were right!

However as he was one of Dream’s ravens that indicates he used to be human (even if Lucien claims otherwise). There was even some suggestion that he’s Adam. Not sure about that as it’s very close to the novel Lilith but not impossible either.

5. It’s Daniel the asshole, ladies and gentlemen! I’ve complained about this before. That whenever anyone other than Neil Gaiman writes Daniel, no matter how hard they seem to try, Daniel comes off as a f--king asshole. Supposedly he has no choice, he has to leave. But he’s so f--king cold here, so, so cold.

You... Heartless... Little... Asshole...

Morpheus was more kind to Dora in the flashback than Daniel is here! WHY do people keep making Daniel crueler than Morpheus was pre-character-growth??! Granted I’m starting to think there may be something wrong with Simon Spurrier, himself, that he thought what Lucien did on the steps of the castle with “I did warn you” is perfectly okay. He doesn’t treat it like anything bad that he just uncreated a bunch of Merv’s friends on the steps of the castle. In fact he treats Merv like he’s overreacting for being upset by it! (Clearly he never read the start of Sandman: Overture or even The Dolls House.) And yet we’re not supposed to be sympathizing with Merv’s behavior. He made that clear. Who (besides Dora) Are we supposed to care about?!??

His narrations try to keep us from pitying those that actually deserve pity.

Because how dare Cain actually give a damn that his brother is acting weird!

Unless Daniel turns out to be wearing a control collar ala X-Men, or has a magical-bomb implanted in his spine (Suicide Squad) this is going to be very hard for The Dream Lord to justify and even then it’ll be a little hard to forgive. Daniel’s walking around, obviously still has access to some power. Whatever his “I have no choice” is all about it seems like it can’t be quite equatable to Morpheus in the binding circle, in his glass bubble.

6. I still want to know what the Hell happened to the griffon. That griffon wasn’t of The Dreaming. He was a gift from The Greeks. Why did you replace him? For the sake of cultural diversity? There’s no in-story explanation. Eve being any race she feels like makes sense. But this doesn’t make sense and it’s jarring. The Griffon wasn’t a dream entity. See “The Wake.”

7. Oh, look, someone skimmed Dream Hunters, or they didn’t and just picked up a few bits and pieces of Japanese folklore...

8. MIlam Cascades is being far over-used and retroactively at that. Trying to insert that into the original Sandman now doesn’t work. I get the lore, I understand it’s origin, but really stop. You’re just trying to make a mini Dream vortex. or Vortexes... er Vortices.

I NEVER want to be subjected to Milam Cascades again! I’m starting to hate it as much as I hate the stupid revisions to Nuala’s necklace to make it a Macguffin, the existence of Echo, Cain and Abel’s sister wives, and Danny Nod. (Creations from the first version of The Dreaming.)

Do NOT retroactively describe things you want to insert into the original Sandman! YOU are not Neil Gaiman! Only he has a right to do that! How dare you!

This is egotism. Not only is Milam Cascade being used as a mini Dream Vortex (the way Matthew’s death in the first version of The Dreaming was used as a mini knock-off of The Wake) but to have the audacity and arrogance to insert it into the original Sandman lore, to retroactively TAINT the original Sandman with this crap! No. if Neil, himself, did it, I would begrudgingly accept it. But not here. Not like this. I don’t care if it’s “With Neil’s consent.” He consents to a LOT of stuff, including the first, now defunct, version of The Dreaming.

Wow, I’m more angry about that than I originally thought...

9. How dare you! How DARE you do this to Lucien! How dare you! You saw how much it was despised that Matthew was killed off in the late 90s / early 2000s version of The Dreaming and yet you go and use Lucien like this? And what’s worse is we’re supposed to pretend his behavior in issue 2 was okay because of it. And no one reacted badly to him uncreating dream entities on the steps of the castle and acting like it was a form of punishment (”I did Warn you.”) except Mervyn, who was OBVIOUSLY in the wrong, because he’s an EVIL racist now!

So, first you write Lucien badly, but I guess the memory fading was supposed to make that justifiable. Then you don’t even address that what he did was wrong, except through a character who you’ve gone out of your way to make unlikable and ridiculously out of character. And now poor Lucien is dying and “Won’t be at peace in The Dreaming.”

Thanks, Satan.

10. Still no explanation for randomly turning Mervyn into a redneck Trump supporter and classist caricature. The biggest OOC (Out of character) moment being when he made the “You people” comment to Erzulie in The House of Whispers comic book. Do you not remember how Merv would look like a deer in headlights if caught backbiting Morpheus but you think he’d be racist to a Voodoo goddess to her face?! This... Does not make sense...

Yeah, no....

He should be afraid Erzulie will turn him into a spiced pumpkin jam in her cupboard.

11. The only sword in Destruction’s realm should have been his own and he took that with him when he abandoned his post. (See Brief Lives.)

12. He writes Cain as a knife-happy muppet that wants to stab everything. We’re supposed to know something’s wrong with how Abel’s acting but this is what he thinks is normal for Cain? Cain ONLY kills his brother, it’s his compulsion. As they are both mostly immortal this is kind of a thing for them. And Simon Spurrier has yet to justify having THE KEEPER OF MYSTERY spend nearly three pages explaining who and what he is. (There’s no way in Hell he’s murder incarnate. That’s like saying Bill Gates is Windows OS Incarnate.)

_________________________

Things I’m okay with:

I’m okay with Dreamkin. We can keep that term. I’ve been trying to figure out what to call the creatures of the Dreaming for over a year and a half now. Dreamkin works.

The Morpheus flashback was... Okay... I sort of liked those.

Matthew’s still being written semi-decently.

The art is decent.

There. It’s done. It’s written. I’m going to go back to re-reading Goethe’s Faust again...

I’m tagging all the Sandman fans who may want to see this.

@jr4cats @sorry-for-the-chocolate @deathlyendless @winterbirdybuddy @vagaryhexxx @endlessemptynight

#Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Universe #The Dreaming #Anti-Simon Spurrier #Matthew The Raven #Lucien The Librarian #Dream of The Endless #Daniel Hall #Morpheus #The Sandman

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thatshinobilife · 6 years

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i know ive seen you sy in the past you like Avatar, I was wondering what you thought about the live action series netflix just announced ?

Hmmm……how to put this. This is how all avatar related content has gone since the original series concluded in 2008:

Legend of Korra: badAvatar Comics: REALLY bad2010 film: SOUL shatteringly terribleLike don’t get me wrong - I WANT this to be good. I WANT this to be worth watching, to be worth making, to be worthy of the original series. But literally nothing that has happened in the franchise since 2008 has given me any hope that it will be. While I respect the work Bryan and Mike did on the original series, they are FAR from the only reason it succeeded and a mass amount of credit is owed to the rest of the writing department who as I understand it will have nothing to do with this live action reimagining. Bryan and Mike are very much an example of writers who believed too much in their own hype and no longer have a firm grasp on what actually made the original show good in the first place. They freely admit half of the things that were great about ATLA were not their ideas and they had to be talked into including. They also committed what I feel is the cardinal sin of writing…….the magnum opus of creator fuck ups…….they retroactively ruined good things about their original show when they attempted to make a sequel. The second you start doing that, I lose all faith in you as a writer. I talk about this with Naruto all the time - if it’s between getting new content at the cost of having the original dragged through the mud or getting no new content at all, then I would rather have no new content. And that’s kind of how I feel with this.

I’m also…..extremely attached to the entire atla cast and don’t want to see them flanderized or written out of character. Azula specifically is my favorite fictional character of all time (even more than the sand sibs!) which is very worrisome as she’s also a hard character to get right. Aaron Ehasz - head writer on ATLA - made a comment that even the internal production team during the run of the show commonly misunderstood her. Bryke clearly don’t understand her given the way they greenlit the comics god awful interpretation of her as ~psychopathic-straightjacket-crazy~ which like…..ok…..actually I can’t even talk about this because it makes me so irrationally angry. I want to be in a good mood so I have to drop this subject right now immediately. I think there’s also some valid concerns about it being done in live action. Avatar is a show that worked VERY well as an animated story. The visual tone and style would require high budget to adequately pull off and even then I’m not sure it would work. While the thought of seeing some of the more epic moments in live action is admittedly exciting to me, I also worry the aesthetic charm of the original will be lost in that format. While bending is based heavily on martial arts, there’s still a fluidity in motion showcased in the original that’s simply not possible to achieve in live action. There’s also just the question of “why” we need a live action version in the first place as there’s not a ton of ways to improve on the original. It makes me think they’re just using this as an excuse to produce a ~darker~ more “mature” version of the original which…..lmfao. Part of the reason ATLA was so good is because it DIDN’T rely on cheap shock factor or graphic content to communicate its themes. There was a quiet yet deeply honest simplicity in the way they addressed the darker aspects of the show that made it so emotionally compelling. I know ya’ll think Game of Thrones is cool but not everything benefits by being made more ~edgy~. ATLA is already a mature show and the fact that its a cartoon doesn’t change that.

My greatest fear though is that they will change the original story to try and forcibly integrate the lore-breaking nonsense that plagued the legend of korra in a completely transparent attempt to validate their own poor writing decisions on the sequel. One mention of raava and I’m cancelling my netflix subscription.

So to summarize: while I’m involuntarily excited on principle, I can’t help but feel this entire project is going to end up just as rage inducing and shoddily written as every other spin off that’s come before it. I genuinely hope I eat my words though! ATLA is an absolutely beautiful show rich with content and I would be over the moon if this new series manages to improve on it or at least lives up somewhat to the quality of the original. I’m just very cautious about it as of right now. I’m not trying to be overly negative but I’m just……I’m so tired. The only sequel/spin off/remake in the entire universal literary canon that hasn’t let me down is Bambi II.

#my text post #live action atla #atla #not naruto related #i was shocked to hear the news though #first were getting the lord of the rings amazon series #then the hbo game of thrones spin offs #then the disney streaming service marvel mini series'#and now this on netflix #I don't have enough money to subscribe to all this shit you fucking corporate ANIMALS #at this point I just want an entertainment monopoly so I only have to pay one subscription fee a month #Anonymous

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neni-has-ascended · 7 years

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What are your thoughts about Marie from P4G? She seems to a contrversy in the fandom so I would like to know your opinion about her and her role in the game.

Ahhh, to Marie or not to Marie. The old song and dance of love, betrayal and the fandom ripping each other’s heads off in the neverending cycle of waifu wars.

To give you my take on the issue:

Short Version: I like the character. A lot. Love her, even.

Long Version:

When I first played Persona 4 and was made aware of the fact that “The Golden” had some additional content I had no chance to experience yet, I was fully prepared to hate her. What I saw go around in the Fandom were horror stories of badly written dialogue, character derailing escapades and a character who has no business being there taking over the entire narrative. Additionally, I wasn’t really sold on her design, since her fashion style seemed pretty badly out of place for P4. So that’s what I went in expecting. A one-note plot device character who’d make my experience worse for it.

Then I actually played P4G and realized that absolutely nothing of what I’d heard was true. Instead of the “obnoxious Tsundere Mary-Sue” I was warned of, I was greeted by a very well-woven in story about a lost girl trying to deny her own loneliness and confusion by distracting herself with the material world and channeling her emotions into secret writings. In many ways a typical teenager, but the way she acts isn’t romanticized at all. It’s ridiculed where it deserves to be ridiculed and treated seriously where it deserves to be treated as such. At no point is she framed as some great, romantic “ARTEEEST” whose suffering makes her a bigger person. She’s just somebody desperately trying to not feel lost. Everything she does, having the protagonist take her out, her stance on consumerism (which she seems to embrace), her constant boredom and impatience, and her poems are symptomatic of how desperately she wants to *not* talk about her real issues that are making her hurt, simply because she doesn’t know how to talk about them. That is, of course, because she’s actually a fragment of Izanami which once rebelled against the goddesses’ corrupted desires and was cast out for it, now resigned to forgetting about its own ideals, which adds a whole layer more to the character. She’s the embodiment of a desire for people’s most honest, sincere wishes to come true, but since Izanami has abandoned her, she can no longer believe in the very ideal that makes her up, hence why she’s so resigned to materialism and living out her own desires only in secret. Additionally, the fact that she’s not actually human makes it hard for her to understand human social norms (just how Izanami doesn’t actually understand humans either), so she often acts terribly out-of line, which is where we get the “Tsundere Archetype” accusations from. However, unlike most cases, Marie is actually a GOOD execution of that character archetype: Not only is her “Tsundere-ness” not just an expression of embarrassment towards a guy she has a crush on (she acts like that towards EVERYONE, not just him), she also has damn good reasons to act like that, since she never actually learned about social guidelines.

Still, I am not surprised the fandom is often as opposed to her as they seem to be. As soon as I’d decided that I actually really like Marie, I felt immediately reminded of the exact same thing happening with a character in another fandom I am big on: Xion from Kingdom Hearts received pretty much the exact same cold initial reception from the fandom as Marie did. And that even though in character analyses she tended to be called a “very good character”.

Of course, the parallels between the cases are immediately visible: Both characters are black haired girls who were added to their respective games in retrospect by the way of expansions to the stories, turn out to be deeply important to the story and lore the players have cared about ever since before they knew this character exist, also turn out to be intrinsically connected to an important canon character, and their absence from the initial release ends up being explained with “All memories of them were destroyed when they died, BUT you now have a chance undo that!!!!”. They are perceived as somehow acting as a “forced love interest” towards a major character.

It’s pretty clear how a character like that would irk players, who might already have invested hours and hours into doing fanwork and crafting fan-theories that do not involve said character. It can be extremely frustrating to have your image of canon foiled like that by a retroactive update to the narrative. However, in both cases I think the kneejerk reactions were actually greatly overstated:

Even though both, Xion and Marie, change something about the lore they were introduced to, the changes are not so great as one couldn’t accommodate for them with ease, a love-relationship with a main character is only implied as a possibility in both cases (In fact, with Marie you can deny taking her down a lover’s route, just like you can with any other character, and with Xion I’d argue it isn’t there at all outside of Axel’s overinterpretation; Xion and Roxas’ relationship seemed strictly platonic or brother-sisterly to me) and, again, timelines where the characters have been erased from existence still exist in both cases, so if you really don’t want to involve them, you can still set your fanwork within those timeframes/timelines.

If anything, I see Marie’s - and by extension, Xion’s - case as a cautionary tale for writers as to what kind of violent reactions to expect from your audience if you decide to introduce important elements retroactively, as to opposed to putting them into the story right away. No matter how well done those elements are, there will be fans who just can’t find it in them to accommodate to that sudden change in the lore. That’s just how it is.

#Neni Replies #Persona 4 #Kingdom Hearts #Marie (Persona 4)#Xion #Neni Theory #extrosexytrollingpolice

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shihalyfie · 3 years

Text

"Canon” and “not canon” in the Adventure/02 universe

This is something I want to talk about, because it has a certain degree of relevance to the question of what I choose to take into account in my analyses and what I don’t. I write a lot about Adventure and 02 because both series are ridiculously consistent over their 104-episode runtime, but there are times when things contradict or don’t quite track together, and I have to figure out how to best rationalize them -- which means I need to make arbitrary decisions on what to count and not count, and when one does make those kinds of decisions, you’re very liable to get the complaint: “but that’s not canon!”

Which always makes me think: who decided that? And in the end, this is something that I think extends beyond just Digimon; every fanbase for everything always wants to believe there’s a clear-cut answer to things that everyone’s supposed to follow in a canonical timeline, and things that fall outside it. And sometimes, for some franchises, that is doable, because official staff will actually say outright that “this counts, and this doesn’t.” But that’s not how Toei and Bandai work, and their modus operandi has always been to toss a bunch of often-contradictory stuff at everyone and go “figure it out yourself,” and I think at some point the fanbase really needs to acknowledge that this so-called clear-cut boundary of “canon” and “not canon” doesn’t actually exist at all. Or in other words, any assertion of something being “canon” or “not canon” in the Adventure and 02 universe is purely something arbitrarily defined by fans, and was never determined by official - which, conversely, has actually encouraged you to take as much as you want and figure out the rest yourself.

Before we begin, I do want to make clear that this is not about one’s personal canon based on one’s own preferences -- that is to say, if you’re going “I don’t consider this canon because I don’t like this/don’t want to work with this,” then that’s entirely your right, especially if you’re doing creative work and need to decide what to apply and to not to apply. (Although, as always, one must be conscientious and respectful of those who do like it and consider it canon, because everyone’s going to differ on this.) What I am talking about is when people take a substantial part of the franchise that they otherwise like, such as a movie or drama CD, see one detail that’s contradictory in terms of the timeline or lore, and take that as evidence of “yep, the entire thing’s not canon. We’ll just throw the entire thing out, then.” It just makes me think -- you threw out a perfectly good work for that?! That’s such a waste!

First of all, Toei and Bandai don’t work that way

In general, a lot of the contradictions in the series have a “right hand is not talking to left hand” problem, because as much as we would like to believe that a Digimon series is written by a single consistent entity, the franchise itself is a huge trade-off between Toei and Bandai, and a lot of things from Bandai -- spinoffs, crossover material, games, what have you -- don’t exactly have a stellar track record of being vetted by Toei anime staff. It’s pretty well-known that game portrayals of certain characters can be really off or have misleading info, and even V-Tamer’s somewhat guilty of it. So this is going to happen no matter whether you like it or not, and it happens with any long-running kids’ series that involves a collaboration between multiple companies like this.

Moreover, the traditional custom for Toei “side movies” (in this case, meaning things like the original movie, Our War Game!, Hurricane Touchdown, and Diablomon Strikes Back) is that they’re produced with minimal involvement from the original series’s core staff -- at most, the producer is lightly involved -- and are sometimes even worked on simultaneously with the start of the original series, so you often end up with a movie that’s impossible to fit anywhere in the series timeline because there wasn’t any communication with the two sides. And for that, it’s all too easy to dismiss those movies as “non-canon”, with the fanbase arbitrarily deciding that canon ones are canon because they fit -- but Toei itself has never taken this stance.

The other thing is that, given that Adventure/02 is famous for its ridiculous level of worldbuilding consistency thanks to its director Kakudou’s conscientious efforts on it, it means that as a result, anything not made by him was prone to running afoul on it, and it’s not like the stance back then was to just reject all of it wholesale. “Doesn’t comply with the lore” is so often equated with “not canon”, but Kakudou, the author of that lore, not only made no indication of invalidating or disliking those non-compliant things, but also conversely made an active effort to make those things relevant in spite of that! (See: Our War Game! below.) The official stance is to not deny those works for being noncompliant -- it’s just that Kakudou seems to be the detail-oriented kind of person who personally prefers to work with things that have a high level of consistency (he’s very quick to say “I wasn’t involved on that” whenever someone brings up something from said external materials, not in any condescending way, just “I wasn’t involved, so don’t attribute that to me”). In fact, one of the reasons there wasn’t initially a third Adventure series was that he had difficulty finding a way to adhere to the higher-ups’ pressure to keep all of these contradictions consistent -- so the official stance itself is to try and maintain all of those side works, and that it would be better to end the series itself than to have to do something like deny them.

Which makes things very frustrating for the fans, of course, but nevertheless, that’s how it is -- even back in 2000, the right-hand-not-talking-to-left-hand phenomenon was this significant! And it would have been easy for official to step in and go “okay, we’ll put a statement out here that these don’t apply,” but no, the stance was be that it would be better to stop dragging it out longer and cancel a whole series than to deny those works, which leads us to the current situation. (Plus, think how insulting it would feel from a PR perspective if someone got attached to one of those “non-canon” materials only for official to come out and outright say “yeah this doesn’t count anymore”; we can name examples of this happening in other franchises that have understandably gotten a lot of people upset, and it would be especially offensive to do this right after said material had been released.)

Bolstering the concept of official staff’s very loose opinion of “canon” are the Adventure novels, which were supervised by Kakudou himself and written by Digimon episode screenwriter Masaki Hiro, and are non-compliant with Adventure timeline by design, because it’d be bad for the format to try and depict every single detail in the anime in the form of three novels. Several events are condensed or shuffled out of order, or even sometimes completely different (Koushirou’s incident with Vadermon goes very differently from the anime version). Despite that, this is said directly to be intended as a series of novels to help people understand Adventure and 02 better, and several details in Two-and-a-Half Year Break and Spring 2003 are incredibly consistent with it (namely in the sense of details meant to retroactively connect Adventure to 02, and other background details like Daisuke’s backstory). So you are supposed to do some kind of mental leap where you don’t take the contradictions around the actual events too seriously, but still accept the spirit and the background information you learn from it and retroactively apply it to Adventure and 02 -- and, presumably, that’s probably what you’re expected to do with everything else, too.

And this isn’t even getting into the fact that the anime itself has occasional contradictions and errors due to things like animator error or simply different writers writing different episodes -- the Adventure and 02 staff were certainly very detail-oriented, but they are human and of course inevitably slipped up here and there. How seriously do you take honorifics shifting from episode to episode in ways that don’t seem intentional, or the fact every background material refers to Osamu and Ken having a bunk bed and yet the actual episode with both of them fails to depict it? How do you deal with the fact that the Animation Chronicle is one of the most extensively useful post-02 reference materials with tons of production background info not revealed in the anime, and yet is infamously full of suspected typos that would cause some pretty massive implications if true, or all of those other Bandai and Shueisha-commissioned “side books” and other pieces of media meant to entertain the kids while the series was airing but clearly had no input from Toei staff whatsoever?

In the end, frustrating as it is, the answer seems to be the same as ever: figure it out yourself.

The standards for what’s “canon” and “not canon” are way too arbitrary

Let’s look at a handful of things that have been historically dismissed as “non-canon” by the fanbase:

The Adventure mini dramas and Armor Evolution to the Unknown: Drama CDs that were generally dismissed as non-canon because they’re “too crack” to be canon (their writing style is of the “it’s okay to push the boundaries of characterization for the sake of comedy” sort, and it wouldn’t be until later when we finally got some more serious drama CDs). The latter is full of honorific inconsistencies, most prominently Daisuke and Ken still being on surname basis at a time they’re not supposed to be (due to the fact that it was released while the series was still being produced). But official word is that you’re still supposed to consider them canon -- and yes, that’s Kakudou himself giving official sanction to a drama CD that involved a massive amount of fourth wall breaking and a completely unexplained reunion between the Adventure kids and their Digimon sometime between 1999 and 2002 (apparently this wasn’t the only one, either). How is this supposed to work? Figure it out yourself.

Hurricane Touchdown: The funny part is that up until Kizuna validated Wallace’s existence, there was no actual consistent agreement on why this movie shouldn’t be canon (the Western side being “evolutionary form timeline violations”, the Japanese side being Wallace’s status as a Chosen Child prior to 1995), which really goes to show you how arbitrary all of this is. It also has a sequel drama CD in the form of The Door to Summer, which is also contradictory with Hurricane Touchdown’s ending, so we’ve got two layers of “it can’t be canon because...” -- and yet it has a lot of interesting Daisuke characterization, and, heck, the whole character of Wallace himself, that would all be rejected if you throw this out wholesale. Then Kizuna came along, and there’s a general sense of hesitation against easily denying officially-sanctioned “main” entries like that, which retroactively forced people to somehow skip past all that and accept it, just for the sake of Kizuna’s notability.

Diablomon Strikes Back: Similar to the above, it used to be constantly dismissed as “a non-canon fun movie” because of the evolutionary forms that appear in it, despite the fact that 02 itself established that it wasn’t that hard to restore evolutionary forms if you figured something out. Somehow, a ton of people treated it as such an impossibility that “they figured it out in the first three months of 2003″ would be a viable explanation, and yet official word is that of the second through fourth movies, this is the one that had the most amount of initial consultation with the TV anime staff! And then tri. and Kizuna came along and clearly had high-level evolutions in play too, and dismissing DSB on these grounds meant dismissing those by proxy, and a lot of people were too intimidated to do that and decided to retroactively validate DSB instead, after years of having dismissed it for this reason. Again: look how arbitrary this all is.

The tri. stage play: Mainly because its timeline of events doesn’t fit tri. at all (in regards to the reboot and part 5). This is a fair assessment to make in light of the fact that it doesn’t seem to work very hard to be compliant with the very series it’s branded with, but, funnily enough, it’s actually more lore-compliant with the original Adventure and 02 than the tri. anime series is, and yet the few minor contradictions it makes with the tri. anime series are sufficient to consider it completely kicked out of canon, yet those same people who declare it so aren’t as willing to hold the anime to that same standard just because it holds a more prominent “main” position.

On the other hand, let’s look at some of the things that have been more likely to be accepted than the above:

Our War Game!: Reading this is probably going to make everyone go “whaaaaaat?”, but yep: according to Kakudou, the second through fourth movies were all made without his supervision or involvement and thus have lore contradictions (although he also made sure to say that they’re very fine movies, too). We still haven’t figured out what the lore contradiction is, and so the fanbase considers it canon, and even 02 itself makes multiple references to “the Diablomon incident” in 2000, so you can’t consider this non-canon in the slightest...but yes, according to the official side, it’s actually got a contradictory incursion somewhere in there. There is one hypothesis as to what it is, and it’s such a minor thing that no fan or even official member of staff would dare deny the movie for it, but it still contributes to how arbitrary this entire concept is: Kakudou didn’t want to give anyone (except Miyako, who’s based off a real person) canonical birthdays or blood types for the sake of preventing horoscoping, but Sora’s birthday is portrayed as being around March in the movie. And yes, Kakudou himself refers to this as being something that only happened because he wasn’t involved. (Remember what I said about him historically being quick to disclaim involvement on anything he wasn’t involved on, regardless of how much of a minor detail it is, yet doesn’t necessarily intend to deny the work entirely due to it?)

Tag Tamers: A very vital part of Ken’s backstory that establishes a lot of context behind the Dark Seed and the elusive Akiyama Ryou, which also does not make sense with 02′s timeline and characterization at all, presumably because Bandai and Toei weren’t properly communicating on what kind of details they needed to iron out for this. But of course, all of us would like some explanation to Ken’s backstory, and we have to apply some kind of logic as to how that makes sense, and I’ve yet to see people declare Tag Tamers (or any of the other WonderSwan games) as entirely non-canon as a result.

tri.: For obvious reasons, it’s a “major entry in the franchise”, so people are generally more averse to dismissing it so easily (or, at least, for reasons that aren’t related to pure preference), but I find it rather ironic that Kizuna’s the one that got all the attention for apparently being lore non-compliant, when the exact same lore points mentioned in Kakudou’s reasoning as to why it’s non-compliant (along with a ton of things that actually were in Adventure and 02′s text) are gone against even more regularly and prominently in tri., whereas Kizuna still goes out of its way to adhere to most of these and only seems to have incurred a contradiction in terms of originally intended ideology, and, possibly, its extensive use of the aforementioned movies. (Recall that this got brought up for Kizuna specifically because Kakudou was initially consulted for it; he wasn’t involved in tri. to begin with at all.) See above on how people’s unwillingness to write this one off so easily despite everything ended up retroactively dragging DSB into “accepted canon” territory; that’s how arbitrary this entire thing is.

Then, tied to all of this and making it even more confusing is Kizuna, which, again, putting all issues of personal preference aside, is basically being torn back and forth between all of these whenever you try to apply one of the above arbitrary standards. It’s allegedly lore-noncompliant with Kakudou’s lore and thus lacks his involvement, but it does have the involvement of original series producer Seki Hiromi who was known to be responsible for the series’s original human drama themes (including the premise of 02 itself) and personally vetted the scripts so that everyone could be properly in-character and the original themes still intact; it’s supposedly a “main” entry to the point where people will stop denying older works’ canonicity because of it (see Hurricane Touchdown above), but, legally speaking, is actually classified in the same “gekijouban” category that the first four movies and things like the Tamers through Savers movies are; the staff will say to hell and back that the 02 epilogue still holds (and the movie makes abundant retroactive references in both worldbuilding and themes to it), but many people out there will still insist that the movie ending that way means that (like with DSB above) “they figured it out” between the movie’s ending and the epilogue is apparently some kind of impossibility, and either the movie is non-canon or the 02 epilogue is invalidated now. (My personal stance on this is that the epilogue itself provides the answer to how they figure it out if you look closely at the movie’s themes, but that’s a tangent.)

The point I’m trying to make is that regardless of whatever stance you take on all of the above points, this is all extremely arbitrary, and these fanbase rationalizations on why this and that isn’t canon are constantly contradicting each other, shifting, and occasionally based on really meaningless things. And, again, it’s fine if you’re saying that you don’t consider this or that canon because you personally dislike it or where it went, or you find it difficult to work with, or between two contradictory things you prefer one or the other (I certainly have my fair share of strong opinions in this regard) -- but it would be better if we all admitted this and went “I just don’t consider this canon” instead of acting like there were ever some universal consensus or official backing.

"It didn’t happen this exact way, but something resembling it still happened”

So, we’re in this uncomfortable situation where we’ve been handed a ball of knots and have to work with it (a very frustrating situation especially for fanfic writers), and I have to personally say that I think all of this comes from people having far too inflexible of a concept of “canon” and “not canon”, especially to the point of rejecting a full-on perfectly fine entry just because of one timeline issue. I honestly think it’d be better if we could rather take a certain stance close to the Pixiv dictionary wiki’s view of how Wallace can appear in Kizuna: “(some version of) Wallace exists in the timeline of the main story.”

Right, so: Hurricane Touchdown is contradictory. The evolutions don’t work at that point in timeline, and Wallace shouldn’t be able to be a Chosen Child from before 1995. Those things don’t work with Adventure and 02′s timeline and lore. However, let’s look at the following story: let’s say that, between 02 episodes 14 and 15 (when the movie first screened), while school was on break, Daisuke and his friends went on a summer adventure to the US and met a boy named Wallace, who had a struggle regarding one of his partners losing his sanity, and bonded with him and helped put his partner to rest. No part of this contradicts 02 at all. There we go! So we can safely say that some story that mostly resembled Hurricane Touchdown happened in the canon timeline. Some of its details weren’t exactly the way they happened in “the movie we, as the audience, saw” -- but something that substantially resembled the movie still happened in the universe of Daisuke and his friends. And you can apply that same logic to Tag Tamers, or any other vital canonical but ostensibly contradictory material -- the media that we as the audience got may not accurately reflect the events in universe, but there’s absolutely nothing saying that some more timeline and lore-consistent alternate version didn’t happen in canon instead.

Moreover, even Adventure/02 itself gives you a bit of precedent for this concept -- namely, the fact that the final episode of 02 reveals that the entirety of Adventure and 02 is part of Takeru’s novels. It’s a pretty common theory that there might be differences in the way “the story we got” was presented, versus how they actually happened in the world Takeru lived in -- of course, Takeru certainly went out of his way to remove as much bias from the situation as he could, but you can hardly say that he, as a human, would be completely free from it, and he himself even admits that everyone he consulted had differing opinions on the events in question. And not every single piece of Digimon media has the Hirata-Hiroaki-as-Takeru narrator, which means that perhaps it’s not entirely out of the question that the different takes on the stories that the Tokyo Chosen Children went through in their youth would not be entirely consistent with each other, depending on who’s telling it. But that doesn’t mean that those events necessarily didn’t happen at all, just that some of the details were different from what we as the audience saw.

In the end, I leave the rest to everyone else to figure out -- as I said, I think this is a decision everyone will have to make for themselves, whether they’re a fanfic writer picking and choosing what to include for the sake of a coherent fic, or whether they’re just expressing a preference to not have to think too hard about or work with something they’re turned off by. (And in the case that there is someone who expresses their dislike of working with something and doesn’t want to consider it canon, I think it’s very rude to give them grief for that, and conversely, if you don’t want to consider something canon but encounter someone who doesn’t have as much of a problem with it, it’s very rude to try and expect them to change their opinion to yours.) But I do think it would do well for all of us to have a bit more of an open mind and a creative attitude towards these kinds of things before trying to shove everything into a “fully canon” and “fully not canon” binary.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #shihameta #kizuna spoilers

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toaarcan · 6 years

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“Why are you even here?!”- A spot of RWBY Analysis

So, in the wake of Volume 5 and today’s soundtrack release tearing our Bee-shipping hearts out of our chests, we’re starting to get a picture of where the show is headed.

I’m not going to give an in-depth analysis of ‘All That Matters’ myself. It’s already been done better than I ever could several times over. I will cover the bases, though, just for context, in case this is somehow the first post on the subject you’ve found.

1) Yang is absolutely heartbroken by Blake leaving. We kinda knew this already but this is absolute confirmation.

2) Yang thinks Blake doesn’t care about her in the same way, which is erroneous, but she doesn’t know and gaaaahh, someone give the poor girl a hug, she needs it.

3) Despite believing that Blake doesn’t love her, Yang will willingly deal with the pain this causes her, just to have Blake around, because that’s All That Matters to her.

That should cover it, I think.

Alright, so now we know that endgame Bees is absolutely a thing. Like where is the show going to go from here except in the BumbleBY direction? This is a path that we’ve been headed down since Volume 3 at the latest, probably since Volume 1 if the little animation details that have been pointed out from those episodes are anything to go by. And they are, because in an animated medium, corpsing is not a thing. Any expression or body language the character makes is entirely within the animator’s hands.

So, we’re headed in the direction of Bees, but that means I’m going to have to address the elephant, or rather monkey, in the room.

Yeah, I’m going to be the guy that brings up Sun.

Now, before I go any further, I want to clear the air. I don’t hate Sun. I think he’s a decent character, he’s had some great scenes and moments, and he’s not awful comic relief, though I don’t find him very funny.

No, I’m bringing him up because I’m starting to question why he’s even around.

Y’see, back when V3 dropped, I was convinced that we were going to get Blacksun/Eclipse first, and then BumbleBY after that. I was also convinced that Sun was going to get offed by Adam ahead of the final battle between BY and the punchable edgelord himself.

There’s this part in Journey to the West wherein Sun Wukong (Yes, RT didn’t change the name at all, and yes, that does bother me more than it should) fights a Bull Demon King, and we know that RT likes to put little allusions to the cast’s inspirations into the show, like Jaune’s tormentor being named after Cardinal Winchester, Yang fighting both a dude in a bear mask and a group of Ursa, Ruby’s association with Beowolves, Pyrrha taking an arrow to her Achilles’ tendon during her last stand, etc.

There would also be reason enough for Sun and Adam to fight. Not just because of their mutual thing for Blake, but also because of their differing ideologies. Adam despises humanity and his rage over the way the Faunus have been treated has made him into the monster he is today. Meanwhile, Sun is very friendly with humans and is even on a team with three of them, while appearing to be completely oblivious of the Faunus’ plight entirely, somehow. Trust me, I’ll be getting back to that.

In Journey to the West, the Monkey King wins this battle, because he is a staggeringly powerful character who is basically unstoppable, even for actual gods. In RWBY? Well, RT has shown that just because they make references to the myths in which their characters draw basis, doesn’t mean they’re going to follow those to a T.

At the tail end of Volume 3, the general assumption was that Adam was going to be built up as an unstoppable threat, that Blake and Yang would have to take down together. Now, after Volume 5, it’s clear that I, and everyone else, was wrong. Adam’s power in V3 has been revealed to be a case of him using Blake’s fear and Yang’s rage to his advantage, maintaining control of the situation and using that to dominate them in combat. When Blake confronts him in V5, she has all the control and isn’t afraid of him, so he has no power over her and loses the fight.

Because it was assumed that Adam would be built up, I thought that the best way for this to escalate was to have him make good on his threat to “destroy everyone that Blake loves”, or at least start. And given that it wasn’t going to be one of the main four, and he has nothing to do with JNR, the only obvious option was Sun, which, tied in with the above, made it all add up into a further tragedy.

Now, I’m not so sure. With the SS BumbleBY already at full steam, and Adam’s role being a different one that what I expected, I’m less confident that my theory of “Blake and Sun hook up, Adam kills Sun, Yang and Blake defeat Adam, Yang helps Blake heal, Blake and Yang hook up” is going to come to fruition. I feel like we’re headed straight for BY hookup and that’s that, and the show seems to support that.

That, then, brings me back to the title, and my question as to why Sun was even added to the show in the first place.

It seems as though Sun’s primary role in the show is to give Blake someone to talk to when she’s running away from RWY. Both times, at the end of V1 and all through V4 and most of V5, this results in exposition about the plight of the Faunus, the birth and corruption of the White Fang, etc. Now I don’t think this is bad writing. In fact I would prefer if characters took the time to discuss the history and lore as part of the show itself rather than having the WoR shorts. However, in this specific case, having Blake explain this detail to Sun, rather than to RWY or JNPR, has the unfortunate side effect of making Sun look like a total ignoramus when it comes to his own history and the prejudices that the people around him have against him.

Now, if Sun had spent his entire life somewhere like Vale, where Faunus discrimination is lower, I could somewhat see this. It would still make him totally oblivious of the White Fang itself, which would be weird, but still. However, Sun is a student from Haven Academy, and Mistral is supposed to be second only to Atlas for Faunus rights issues.

Sun’s other character trait is his crush on Blake, but given the dearth of Blacksun content across Volume 5, the heavy BumbleBY content in the same volume, and the soundtrack providing not just a new Bees song (Which retroactively confirms ‘Wings’ as another Bees song for the four people who weren’t already convinced) but also no Blacksun song, well, doesn’t look like that’s going anywhere.

Ultimately, we end up with a character that, if I’m being quite blunt with y’all, needn’t have even existed in the first place if Volume 1 had been a little better written.

For the Volume 4-5 stuff, Blake has Ghira and Kali to talk to, and more scenes if those three together would’ve been great.

For Volume 1, have Blake run away and ditch her bow, as-in the show. Then focus on RWY and Penny trying to find her, learning that there’s a White Fang group in the town and discover that Blake is heading for their rendez-vous point on her own.

Build up the suspense as this progresses- Why is Blake looking for the White Fang? Is she possibly trying to rejoin them in some form? When they get there, they find Blake surrounded and trying to stop Roman and his new allies, at which point the three jump in to back her up, and beat up the goons together, while Penny takes out the Bullhead and covers them. Penny should also reveal her weapons when nobody is looking at her, for obvious reasons.

Blake can then explain the origin and corruption of the White Fang to her teammates, and also part of her reason for leaving.

It’s an unfortunate state of affairs for Sun. He feels more like a plot device whose purpose has been fulfilled. Hopefully when he returns (Because I doubt he’s going to Atlas. If they’re taking anyone from the Menagerie/White Fang plot it should be Ilia), they’ll have figured out a proper role for him in the show.

#RWBY #RWBY Critical #BumbleBY #RWBY Analysis #Yang Xiao Long #Blake Belladonna #Sun Wukong #Ruby Rose #Weiss Schnee #jaune arc #Pyrrha Nikos #Cardin Winchester #Ghira Belladonna #Kali Belladonna #Adam Taurus #Eclipse

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