#if it was an anime it’d be like 700 episodes or something

[im-still-watching-anime]

sakura: welcome back to team seven sasuke here’s the quick update - we’re all gay now including you. also naruto is going to ask you out tomorrow and if you say no im going to use my new super strength to beat you to a pulp

sasuke: ……can i have the long update

sakura: no.

[slapphapp1]

Shō Kusakabe and His Freaking Weird Ability That Makes No Sense

Short disclaimer: this post is LONG, and I mean a bit longer than Gojo and Chuuya (like 700 words longer than Chuuya and that post is also quite long). But that’s only because there’s a lot to say about this topic and I keep getting distracted and adding more things. And while writing this we went over our thermodynamics unit in my physics class, so that kept on adding more ideas.

When I started Fire Force, I thought it was just interesting. I thought the concept was fun, but the fanservice definitely brought it down on my list of favorite animes. But then Sho (a.k.a. “Moonboots” via @fairytailwzard) got introduced. At first, I was like, “awwww, he’s cute.” but then I saw his power. And unlike both Chuuya and Gojo, I had zero idea what they were talking about when they described it. And the thing about things I don’t understand is, I always want to understand them. So this bugged me in general. But then, they started trying to relate the “expansion of the universe” to his speed, and described him being able to “stop time” and that makes it so much more complicated.

To quote directly from season 1 episode 22, “I can steal the heat of expansion and stop time.”

This whole thing—Shō’s ability I mean—makes absolutely no sense to me. I’ve tried rewatching it and reading a few other blogs or Reddit posts online to try and get it to make sense in my mind, but it just refuses to.

They talk about him stealing the heat of the universe, which stops time for everyone except for Shō… but if we even contemplated doing this—for whatever reason—he’d end up probably lowering the temperature of the world to 0 Kelvin.

Short science lesson here: 0 Kelvin, aka “Absolute Zero” is SUPER cold. For my American readers, it’s -459.67°F. And for everyone else, it’s -273.15°C. Now, this temperature is so cold that it means that the molecules that are always constantly moving, stop. All kinetic energy that was previously in the molecule is absent. Absolute Zero is not something we’ve achieved yet though. We’ve gotten super close, but we’ve never actually reached it. The closest we’ve gotten is 1.0 × 10−10 K or about -273.114°C. So like SUPER close, but not quite there yet (and at this point, we reach something called the “Bose-Einstein Condensate” but we’re not going to get into that because it’s even more complicated). Another thing that supports this theory is the fact that when Shō uses his ability too much, his body begins to freeze (kinda like when Todoroki uses his ice too much without using his fire).

Another thing; if we’re going by the laws of thermodynamics, Shō is probably breaking at least one of them.

The first law is the law of conservation of energy: energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed. And it’s saying that while Shō is “stealing the heat of expansion”, so energy isn’t technically being destroyed, it’s really being transformed into speed (possibly?) and energy in a form that Shō can use. But what happens after he expels the heat? I’m assuming it just kind of disperses back into the surroundings. I mean, considering it’s an endothermic process, going by the ice that forms after he uses his ability for a while. I’m guessing after he’s expelled all he can, the energy goes back to expanding the universe, but I dunno, so I’m just assuming that this one is safe.

The second law of thermodynamics is about entropy. And entropy, put simply, is nature’s tendency to create chaos out of order (you see this in ice melting, campfires, something dissolving in water, living things dying, etc.). It’s also the fact that heat will never flow from cold to hot (by itself. It’d only be able to do this when you do work on the system, like with a heat pump or refrigerator), only hot to cold. Now, I can’t really tell if Shō is breaking this law. If he is stealing the energy like he says he is, then his body would end up being SUPER hot, I mean like evaporating your insides kind of hot. But since he’s not dying let’s just ignore that. After he “steals” the energy and becomes super hot (not like that) his body would begin to try to reach thermal equilibrium with its surroundings. After his body’s temperature returned to normal, however, apparently it still keeps dispelling energy, going back to him using his ability too much. But that shouldn’t happen in this case, because a body can’t do that. Anyway, long story short, I’m pretty sure he’s breaking that law.

The third and last law (there’s actually a zeroth law, but that doesn’t really apply here. It’s basically the transitive property in math, just applied to temperature. If A is in thermal equilibrium—is the same temperature—with B, and B is in thermal equilibrium with C, then A is in thermal equilibrium with C. As you can see, it doesn’t really have much to do with what I’m talking about.) is basically the fact that a system can approach absolute zero, it will never actually reach it. This is due to the fact that if something were to actually reach absolute zero, then its entropy would do the same, and that wouldn’t work. And if we’re going by my theory that Shō has to get to absolute zero to use his ability, then this just doesn’t make any sense at all.

So all in all, when using his ability, Shō is breaking some very fundamental laws of physics and engineering.

I know *most* anime and anime characters break the laws of physics, or just disregard them completely, but it just bugs me. (There was this one character in a manhwa I read a while back who had the ability attribute of “physics” and I was just super confused, like what does that even mean??)

Going back to the stopping time thing. It says he’s able to cuz he steals the heat of expansion from the universe. But when I think about it, and I mean REALLY think, it still doesn’t make any sense. I mean, why would slowing how fast the universe expands slow time in general? The universe is constantly expanding, and the rate that it’s doing so is speeding up, but time isn’t speeding up for us? So why would slowing it down do anything? The creators are trying to connect two dots that are on completely different planes.

Also Shinra?? Going back in time?? So he can catch Shō?? Like… what???

I know there’s that one part of one of the Superman shows or movies or something that shows Superman going fast enough to spin the Earth backwards and make time reverse, but that doesn’t work either, so I honestly have no idea what the frick happens with this whole thing.

I rewatched the episode after learning about stuff in my physics class, and in the episode, Licht is trying to figure out how Shinra disappeared from Shō’s “frozen world” and the way they explained it was Shinra goes so fast that his body can’t handle it, so it breaks down “into the invisible particle level and self-destructs.” Licht then tries to reason how the heck his body is coming back together and figures that both Shinra and Shō are able to do what they do because of the Evangelist. And yes, I guess that’s a loophole because the Evangelist can make anything happen, but still, that doesn’t explain how any of this works. She’s taking the body that Shinra has destroyed and putting it back together. It’s like expecting the wind to blow in your messy room and clean everything up. This basically means the Evangelist is capable of not only disrupting, but reversing entropy.

Something that she should definitely not be able to do.

Other Theories:

I guess maybe it’s kinda like Karim Flam? Who uses the energy from fire to make music, which makes ice? (What I’m guessing his ability is, is he takes the energy from his surroundings and fire which freezes the water molecules in the air. And he ends up using the energy from all of that to make music? IDK) But his ability doesn’t make sense either. I might make a whole other post about him.

Maybe it’s like time dilation, but the opposite? Time dilation means that the faster you move, the “longer” time takes to pass. There’s a story about an astronaut that has a twin brother. And while the astronaut was in space, he aged slower than his brother that was on earth. Fun fact: clocks on GPS satellites are set to move a bit faster than clocks on earth to account for this.

I feel like his ability would make a lot more sense if he just like… stole people’s energy and used it as his own or something. That would explain how he seems so much faster then them, he’s literally stealing the energy they need to move. And if they have no energy, and they don’t move, and he’s using it, he’s going to be faster right? I think that would make a lot more sense than “stopping time because he stops the expansion of the universe.”

Also, if you have any comments or theories about this, please share! I’d love to hear all of your opinions! But beware: I have only watched the Fire Force anime, so please don’t spoil manga things if you can help it.

Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

Extra Notes:

If you’re still reading this: Yay! You made it through this whole post! Now for some “fun stuff”.

First things first: I have no idea what my upload schedule is going to be from now on. I have college and I work when I don’t have school and I’m not doing homework (plus I beta read for @fairytailwzard), so I rarely have free time. Quite a few of these posts take a ton of time due to all the research I have to do to complete them. So, for now, maybe plan on a post every month-and-a-half to 2 months until I’m at least done with this semester. (So at most 3 posts until April/May).

Also, my ask box is open! So if you have any science-related (or any other) questions about any animes (or mangas/manhwas) feel free to ask! I’ll also do normal TV shows, movies, and books if you want. (There are some limits: I won’t do R-rated things/the equivalent in TV shows, or if it’s too long—stuff like One Piece, Naruto, Dragon Ball anything, Game of Thrones, etc.) And I will do my best to answer your questions! I’ll make a list and post all the things I’d be willing to write for.

Fair warning: if you ask me a question about something I haven’t seen, I will try to watch/read the thing before answering so it may take more time.

Completely off-topic, but it’s February 15th! So happy birthday Kim Dokja!! And happy late valentines day for all you people who actually have friends and significant others!

[hannahmcne]

Just a Dream - A MLB Oneshot

Birds were chirping, the sun was drifting through the dust lazily, and Alix was fighting to stay awake. Her dad had had to run to the Louvre early, so she'd been dropped off a full hour before school started. Armed with her backpack stuffed full of half-completed homework and a cooling cup of foul-smelling coffee, Alix trudged upstairs towards the locker room. She put her lunch, several binders, and her foul-smelling gym stuff into her locker before taking her backpack, now much lighter, upstairs.

The door was unlocked even though Mrs. Bustier still hadn't left the early morning teacher meetings she had to attend every Friday. Alix nudged the door open with her toe, shouldered a yawn, and paused mid-step as she spied the other person in the room.

In the spot where Adrien would usually sit was a girl with pink and orange streaks in her blonde hair, along with several friendship bracelets braided into the hair at the nape of her neck. Her mouth was open as she slept, and messy red eyeshadow was smudged around the corners of her eyes. She wore a band shirt that Alix did not recognize, and black ripped jeans with worn-through tennis shoes.

Alix had never seen her before.

Alix carefully scootched past her and went to set her stuff down at her desk. Then, after a moment's deliberation, she walked back down the aisle and prodded the girl's arm.

"Hey!" She called. "Time to get up, please."

"Ugh!" The girl groaned, rubbing her eyes as she woke. "Did I fall asleep in class again?" She rubbed her eyes as she looked up and squinted at the empty board. Her eyebrows suddenly knit together in confusion.

"Uh, who are you?" Alix asked as the newcomer stared at the board like they were trying to remember where they'd seen it before.

"Marilyn…?" She answered as she turned to look at Alix. Her jaw fell open as she took in Alix's bubble-gum pink hair and her unique outfit. Alix didn't think that was quite fair, seeing as what she was wearing. She crossed her arms and stared at the punk girl. Then, Marilyn said something Alix hadn't quite expected: "Alex Kubdel."

Alix blinked. "Have we met?" She asked slowly.

Marilyn blinked slowly. She looked at the board and then put her head down again. "I must still be dreaming." She yawned absentmindedly.

"Uh, no you're not?" Alex asked. The door swung open again. It was Kim, fresh from his morning sprints around the school and holding a green smoothie and a diet soda to help it go down. Marilyn sat back up when she saw him.

"Le Chien Kim." She said aloud.

"Just Kim," Kim said absentmindedly as he trooped up the stairs past Alix. Then, he paused. "Have we met?" He asked.

Marilyn stared at the both of them. Her eyes flickered from their frames to the classroom board, to the ceiling. Then, she shrugged and laid her head down on her folded arms. "Not my weirdest dream." She mumbled. "But while I'm here, you should know I totally ship you two together."

"What?" Alix asked. Kim looked abosolutely repulsed.

"Yeah." Marilyn nodded. "You and Kim should totally get together and do those weird couple yoga things and race each other around Paris. It'd be cute."

"Excuse me." Alix planted a hand down in front of Marilyn's face. "Do we even know you? Who do you think you are, to barge in and start making judgment calls on our lives?"

Marilyn sat back up, clearly annoyed that her sleep schedule is being interrupted. "Don't shoot." She drawled. "And it's not just me. Half the fandom thinks you should get together!"

The door swung open again. Marilyn turned to see who had entered, and recited: "Ivan Bruell, Mylene Haprele."

Their other two classmates stopped in surprise. Alix growled.

"You're already together and you're super cute." Marilyn giggled. "I was so excited when I saw Stoneheart for the first time! It was so cute. The way Ladybug caught Mylene while capturing that akuma was so freaking cool!"

Ivan furrorwed his brow at her. "How do you know about that?" He asked.

"Well, the episode was kind of made of close-ups. It was super awesome. If you ask me, they shouldn't have done the red and black spotted backsplash for when Alya got trapped behind the car though." Marilyn shrugged.

"Trapped behind a car?" Alix asked.

"Black and red spots?" Mylene tilted her head in confusion.

"Yeah. Animator decision though. Can I go back to sleep?" Marilyn yawned and put her head on top of a fist.

"Uh, no, you can't." Alix rolled her eyes. "You can't just appear in our classroom, say all these weird things, and go to sleep when we want to ask you stuff about it. So, sit up." She grabbed the back of Marilyn's shirt and hoisted the girl into an upright position as Mylene, Ivan, and Kim gathered around her.

"Sheesh!" Marilyn complained. "Why are you so touchy? My dreams aren't usually like this."

Alix reached out and grabbed the fleshy part of Marilyn's arm. She pinched, hard. Marilyn yelped.

"See?" Alix asked, frustrated. "We're not a dream. Now pay attention."

Marilyn blinked and looked down and where a red mark was starting to form on her arm. She took her skin in between her fingers and pinched herself. Nothing happened. "Oh my gosh," Marilyn said loudly as her eyes began to grow wide. "Oh my gosh!"

"What?" Alix asked irritably.

"I've been transported to the miraculous ladybug realm?" Marilyn shrieked. "Oh gosh, this is what I get for staying up late finishing my stupid math homework! I'm sorry, karma!"

"What's she going on about?" Kim asked the other three classmates as Marilyn seized her own hair and began to pull. They shrugged.

The door to the classroom opened again. A noise was beginning to come from the courtyard below. Students were starting to arrive. Marilyn spun as more people entered the room. "Rose Lavillant, Juleka Couffaine, Max Kante, and Nathaniel Kurtzburg!" Marilyn counted off on her fingers. "That means I'm in a room with Timebreaker, Dark Cupid, Horrificator, Stoneheart, Princess Fragrance, Refleckta, Gamer, and Evillustrator! That's like, a third of season one?"

"Season one?" Mylene asked hesitantly.

Marilyn jumped up and ran to the board. "You guys are part of my favorite TV Show, Miraculous Ladybug! The first episode of season three just barely came out and – ugh!" She paused with a long white piece of chalk in her hands as she shook her tiny fists. "I hate Lila so much!" She shrieked before she began to scribble three lists on the board.

"Lila's such a good and interesting person, though!" Rose said. She looked as confused as the rest of them but still had to stand up for her friend. "She's a personal friend of Prince Ali's!"

"Not really." Marilyn paused in her list writing to turn around and face Rose. "She really is a stupid, stupid liar, and I hate her guts."

"What are you doing?" Kim asked.

On the board were, as previously mentioned, three long lists. The last one had only one word: Chameleon. The others had twenty-six with a 'Christmas Special' in between. Alix recognized many of the names right off the bat. Timebreaker, of course, had been her akumatized identity. In fact, it seemed like Marilyn was listing akumas. Some of the ones she was talking about Alix didn't even recognize. Who was Copycat, or The Collector?

"I've seen every episode," Marilyn announced proudly. "That's about 700 minutes of watch time between all released episodes, not including the webisodes or the chibi episodes, which are so cute!" Marilyn paused to squeal as she began to circle certain villains on her lists. "I've watched episodes in French, German, Spanish, but mostly English. I've transcribed articles for MLB Wikia, and I make fan theories, and I can't draw super well but I love the fanart in this fandom. It's so pretty!" She finished circling and proudly presented her work to the stunned kids in the room. "These are by far the best episodes. Like this one, Style Queen, we learn what happened to Adrien's mom, and it's so sad!"

"What did I just walk into?" Someone asked from the doorway. It was Chloe, with her white designer purse slung over her shoulder and Sabrina by her side. Everyone rolled their eyes as she strolled inside. She examined the board tactfully. "You're missing akumas if that's what you're trying to do. Vanisher, for one." She flipped her hand at Sabrina, who looked delighted to have been awknowledged.

"No, I'm listing episodes," Marilyn said as if it were obvious. She sized up the two new girls. "Sabrina Raincomprix. Your dad is the police officer who needs to learn to cool his jets." Before Sabrina could defend her dad, Marilyn squinted at Chloe. "Ugh." She said. "I hated you back in season one for what you did to Kim, but I guess you do get a small redemption for what happened during the Queen's fight episodes and for shaming Hawkmoth on his fashion." Marilyn snorted and began to laugh.

"Episodes?" Sabrina asked softly.

Alix rolled her eyes. "She thinks she's asleep and we're all from a TV Show she watches when she's awake."

"You are!" Marilyn insisted. "I have clips and articles and fanarts on my phone to prove it!" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a sleek phone with a large screen. When she showed the screen to their classmates, they fell silent. Then, after a long pause, Nathaniel asked: "Is that supposed to be Marinette and Adrien?"

"Yes." Marilyn blushed with pride. "Aren't they adorable? They're my OTP."

"Marinette Dupain-Cheng?" Chloe asked in disgust.

"Yes." Marilyn squealed. "Did you know her name was almost Bridgette when they first started animating her? And her love interest was originally Felix, but Felix didn't have much opportunity for character development, so they let him go and made Adrien, our sinammon roll son, instead?"

Someone made a squeaking sound from the door. Everyone turned to see Alya and Nino standing in the doorway, looking extremely surprised and confused.

"I'm sorry." Nino coughed as he tried to talk around clearing his throat. "Did you just call my dude a cinnamon roll?"

"With an 's'," Marilyn confirmed. "If you ask me, I think Chat is way hotter than Adrien. He's just so much more… free and happy. Sure of himself."

No one was quite sure of what to say.

Marilyn looked around the room in amazement. "Woah." She said. "This is amazing. This has to be a dream. There's no way this can actually be happening. I mean, all we're missing is-"

"Hey, guys, what's going on?" Adrien asked as he walked into class behind Nino and Alya. Marilyn's jaw dropped and unhinged as she stared with wide eyes at him. "Oh, new student?" He asked uneasily.

"Oh my gosh!" Marilyn jumped off the desk and sprinted to him. "I have so many things I want to tell you and – holy crap, I can't believe it's you!" She screamed.

Adrien looked extremely uncomfortable as he awkwardly set his backpack down and pushed it under his desk with his foot.

"Where's my phone?" Marilyn panicked. "I have to show all of you guys my favorite Ladynoir fanart!"

"Ladynoir?" Alya perked up. Nino groaned.

"No." He complained. "Don't start her up on this. They're not a couple."

"I know!" Marilyn growled in frustration. "Isn't it so frustrating? I mean, if they would reveal themselves already, we could all go home and have a lovely rest of our lives, but no! They have to work the stupid love square into every minute of this show and –" She suddenly whirled on Adrien, "If I hear you call Ladybug 'a very good friend' one more time, I'm going to freak out."

"I haven't!" Adrien protested feebly.

"Back up." Alix sighed. "What's Ladynoir?"

"The ship name for Ladybug and Chat Noir." Alya supplied.

"There's also Adrienette, Marichat, and Ladrien. My personal favorite is Ladynoir. Power couple all the way!" Marilyn pumped her fist in the air.

Alix knew she could be a little slow on the uptake sometimes. Sometimes she had to be retaught things from math and her French teacher had to go a bit slower for her, but if she was counting correctly then that meant…

"Are you talking about Marinette?" Alya asked with a face. "Because, uh, she's smitten, and not with Chat Noir."

Adrien blinked and looked around. "Can someone explain what's going on?

"She thinks we're all from her favorite TV Show that apparently centers around a love square between you, Marinette, Chat Noir, and Ladybug while they fight akumas." Max supplied.

"Wait, what?" Marilyn asked.

Adrien looked equally taken aback. "But… I'm not into Marinette. Or Chat Noir for that matter."

"Of course you are!" Marilyn groaned. She looked like she was going to have an anesrum. "You're the secondary character and the love interest and everything depends on you!" She paused. "Actually, scratch that, basically every single problem in the entire series would be solved if Chloe learned to be nice, Lila quit lyin'-" Adrien stiffened at that remark, "-And if Gabriel and Natalie got together."

Adrien began to choke. "What?" He asked. "Excuse me?"

"No, but hear me out!" Marilyn exclaimed. "If Gabriel and Natalie got together, then Hawkmoth wouldn't have a reason to send out any more akumas, and Ladybug and Chat Noir could reveal their identities," She gave a not-so-subtle glare at Adrien, "And the love square would be resolved and everything would be fine!" She threw her hands up in the air along with her cell phone. Everyone watched it turn flips through the air until it hit the wall and remained still beside the door.

Mylene raised her hand. "I still don't see how Hawkmoth plays into that." She said. "Is Hawkmoth trying to, like, get Gabriel and Natalie together?"

Marilyn snorted. "If only our problems were that easy." She rolled her eyes. "Anyways, if Chloe were nicer people wouldn't get akumatized as much because as of right now she's caused fifteen akumas, not counting her own akumatizations. Most of those were in Season One, so she's gotten better, but still. Marinette's caused eleven, however, I count Zombiezou as one both Marinette and Chloe caused because Chloe caused the situation, but it was Marinette's anger that drew the Akuma in the first place." She paused to take a deep breath as everyone stared.

Finally, Rose piped up from the back. "And, uhm, what about Lila lying?"

"Oh, she's a nasty rotten liar who I've never heard spout a single truth since she was akumatized in Volpina. She's an absolute brat." Marinlynn answered with an eyeroll as she leaned back against Mrs. Bustier's desk.

"I am not!" Someone shouted from the doorway. It was Lila. Her face was turning red and her fists were clenched and shaking. "I've never told a single lie!" She said, crossing her arms over her chests.

"Oh, like when you stole Adrien's book about superheroes, got a fox miraculous knockoff and dropped his book in the trash, causing him to get grounded for life?" Marilynn asked with a raised eyebrow. "I'm quite sorry no one took you up on your sprained wrist lie, considered you switched up what hand it was at the end of the day."

The room fell deathly silent. Lila's face was becoming multichromatic as she shook with rage. Marilynn licked the tip of her finger, pointed at Lila, and made a sizzling sound with her teeth. Then, she turned to the class. "You all should probably know she's actively and willingly worked with Hawkmoth before. To the point when she was angry at Marinette and Adrien she literally took an akuma she found that was supposed to be for Marinette and put it in her own earring. The entire fandom hates her guts and we make memes all the time about how the fox says nothing but lies."

"This is unbelievable." Adrien shook his head. "The book was returned miraculously and I was ungrounded. Dad never even said anything to me about it. And how can you expect us to believe all of this? It's honestly… far fetched."

Marilyn began to laugh. She laughed so hard she doubled over onto her knees and then knelt on the ground laughing. Finally, she looked up with tears in her eyes. "Marinette Dupain-Cheng returned the book for you. But not before she showed it to Master Fu and he took three-million photos of it."

"Master… Fu?" Adrien stumbled, eyes wide.

"Mhmm!" Marilynn nodded. She crossed her legs criss-cross applesauce underneath her and smiled. "The Collector was a really interesting episode. We found out the identity of Hawkmoth."

The entire class did a double intake. "You know who Hawkmoth is?" Alya gasped. She reached for her phone, but Nino pulled it out of her pocket and held it under his arm so she couldn't wrench it back.

"I know everyone's identities." Marilyn's eyes sparkled. "Even Ladybug and Chat Noir." Everyone was silent; no one believed her.

Marilyn stood back up and wandered back to the board. The class parted as she went. She picked up the chalk and examined the list in season two. "Queen Bee first transformed in the Episode Queen Wasp." She recited as she made a large arrow pointing to the episode in question, which was already circled for importance, and wrote 'Chloe Bourgeois' beside it. "And Carapace transformed in Anansi." Marilyn shivered as she made another arrow. "I hate spiders." She murmured as she wrote 'Nino Lahiffe' beside the episode.

No one said anything.

"Rena Rouge first transformed in Sapotis." Marilyn continued as she drew a third arrow and wrote 'Alya Cesaire' next to the episode title.

"Wait," Alex said. "Do you mean… Alya and Nino are superheroes?"

Adrien looked very surprised. He stared at Nino as his best friend rubbed the back of his neck. "You were Carapace?" He asked.

"Yeah, sorry man." Nino shrugged. "I wasn't really supposed to tell anyone, even you."

Marilyn snorted, and leaned her head against the chalkboard.

"What?" Adrien asked her.

"Nothing." Marilyn shook her head. "Just… Irony." She made an arrow pointing to the Collector and then paused. She turned around to stare at Adrien, and the corners of her mouth twitched downwards in sympathy. Then she turned back to the board and scrawled 'Gabriel Agreste' beside the episode.

Adrien lurched backward as if he'd been shot. "No!" He exclaimed. "He was an akuma. He was The Collector! He can't be Hawkmoth."

"He akumatized himself," Marilyn answered, stepping back from the board and tossing the chalk in her hand. "He knew you were hot on his trail when he discovered the book was gone, so he akumatized himself. Natalie knew. She's in love with him though, so she keeps silent about the whole thing."

Adrien fell back against his desk with a thump. Marilyn examined her writing. "Ladybug and Chat Noir appear in every episode, of course." She announced to the room. "They're the love square, the main event. Watching them flail around each other is honestly why the show is so popular."

Max blinked and looked sideways at the board. "Ladybug and Chat Noir are the Love Square?" He asked.

"Yes." Marilyn nodded.

"And how many akumas has Marinette caused?" Max asked.

"A lot." Marilyn chuckled. "She did Gamer, Antibug, and Volpina in season one."

"No, she didn't." Chloe and Lila said at the exact same time. They looked at each other in surprise, and then Chloe turned back to Marilyn. "Ladybug did." She said. "I was akumatized when she called me a liar to Chat Noir."

"And I was akumtised when Ladybug came out of nowhere and yelled at me!" Lila exclaimed. Marilyn snorted.

"Yeah, Marinette isn't perfect, but she always does her best. Adrien didn't even apologize for akumatising Copycat." Marilyn gave Adrien a quick glare.

"Copycat?" Alya asked. "Wasn't that when Chat Noir stole the Mona Lisa?"

"Theo Barbot." Marilyn recited. "He sculpted the statue of Ladybug and Chat Noir. When Ladybug didn't show because she was busy stealing Adrien's phone, Chat Noir took the opportunity to tell Theo that he and Ladybug were dating. Theo was akumatized and Adrien never even apologized."

Silence filled the room. Adrien dragged his sweat-covered hands up and down his pants legs. He was still reeling over his dad being Hawkmoth. Marilyn laughed. "You don't all have to look at me like that. Marinette has stolen, like, three people's phones."

"Why would Adrien have to apologize for Chat Noir?" Chloe asked quietly.

Marilyn blinked. "Oh, you're still puzzling on that? You're a little slow on the uptake. Adrien's alter-ego is Chat Noir. With the black cat ring and his kwami Plagg he can transform into the cat-themed superhero."

"Stop," Nino whispered. He looked like he was in pain.

"Wait, wait wait!" Max waved his hands about. "Going back to that love-square-thingy you mentioned with the Ladynoir and Marilap-"

"Marichat!" Marilyn corrected with a glare.

"That would mean that Adrien takes up a place in all those points as either Adrien or Chat Noir and if I'm to interpret your claims of Marinette akumatising Lila and Chloe correctly, then that means that Marinette would also take up a place on each pairing of the square because Marinette would be-"

The door flew open with a bang and a girl with a red face and a pink purse skidded into the room. "Not late!" She yelled triumphantly, crashing into Alya as Marilyn's eyes grew wide.

"Oh no," Nino whispered softly into his hand.

Marilyn opened her mouth as wide as she could and screamed: "LADYBUG!"

[scope-dogg]

New Story of Aura Battler Dunbine: Final Thoughts

As I just posted a while ago, I just got through Aura Battler Dunbine, which is a series that I was overall impressed by on a number of different levels. Therefore, it stands to reason that this OVA followup would be something to look forward to. However, in my quest to see everything that’ll feature in SRW T, the last thing I had to chalk off my list is also probably the first real dud I’ve seen so far. A short and anticlimactic story that nevertheless manages to be confusing, combined with the most bizarrely inconsistent presentation I’ve seen in some time really marred this and caused it to fall well short of my expectations.

The setup is that 700 years after the end of the great Aura Machine war, Rabaan, the reincarnation of the original TV series’ Bern Bunnings, seeks to gain control over Byston Well. To that end he attacks the kingdom of Baran-Baran seeking to capture their princess Remul (who is herself the reincarnation of Rimul Luft from the original series) and take a great treasure they are rumoured to possess. This turns out to be a powerful Aura Battler named Sirbine, which is taken by a young man named Shion, the reincarnation of Dunbine’s hero Shoh Zama. Shion is dragged into conflict with Rabaan. Meanwhile, a dark spectre from the past seeks to further his own mysterious plans.

At three episodes, the plot was too short to really build any momentum or let any characters develop, and most of the actual story doesn’t even happen until the third (and final) episode. I found that there was too much left unexplained or ill-defined. In particular the entire second episode felt like a waste of time - when your anime is three episodes long it’s really not good for one of them to feel like filler. Overall I felt like there wasn’t much to talk about - it didn’t really expand on any of the interesting themes or ideas of the original TV series and it didn’t really entertain on its own merits that much. The ending in particular left me scratching my head and left me feeling confused and unfulfilled - not to mention the fact that it left with a bit of a headache for reasons I’ll touch on in a moment.

The great thing about some of these OVAs is that they had a relatively much higher budget for animation and artwork, so it stands to reason that this would look great. Well, it does - and also it doesn’t. The artwork and the animation for human characters is fantastic - it takes the fantastical elements of Byston Well and ramps them up to the max in excellent detail. This detail extends to the Aura Battlers, who are drawn in exquisite detail, really realising the strange insectoid look that they were aiming for in the original series. However, this was utterly undermined by their animation, or rather the baffling lack thereof. Sirbine and Zwauth are essentially animated using cardboard cutouts in this, where they’re drawn in excruciating detail but animated with a single frame at a time that just slowly slides around the screen. I’ve never seen anything like it before and I absolutely hated it. You can kind of see what they were going for, but honestly the effect is utterly dreadful, rendering them both into cardboard golems that feel like they barely move - it’d look bad applied to virtually any mecha design, but especially to Aura Battlers, that were established as airborne and highly maneuverable in the original series. The few moments when they do (I suspect because they had no other option) animate them “normally” they look good. As an aside, though, the hyper-insectoid, very organic look they went for here was definitely interesting, but now that I’ve actually seen it up close for myself, I don’t know how much I actually care for it - in the original series, they were insectoid looking, yes, but they were still meant to be machines once all was said and done. Here they look like monsters, and even look kind of gross once you look really up close - in particular giving them organic-looking eyes instead of lenses was creepy. I might be by myself on this, but I actually liked the original series’ version of Aura Battlers overall, despite the fact that I usually like overall mecha design more the more original it is. The biggest presentation sin however came right at the end, where the episode promptly assaults the viewer with a minutes-long sequence of non-stop red and blue flashing strobe lighting, which in addition to looking absolutely fucking hideous, is basically guaranteed to trigger a fit in anybody who’s epileptic. Yes, this was before that one Pokemon episode that got banned, but it’s inexcusable all the same - it made my head hurt and my eyes water and I’m not even slightly epileptic. That combined with the baffling nature of the plot events they were trying to portray just left me coming away from this feeling slightly disgusted.

This was kind of a pain to track down too, not being available on any of the usual streaming sites, at least with good subtitles. I don’t normally bother with torrents because I’m lazy, and I don’t feel like this was worth the effort to even watch in the first place. With that in mind, this is a hard sell and I can’t really recommend it. It’s kind of a shame since it’s obvious that a lot of effort went into it, but I just don’t care for the final product much. It also bears repeating that anybody with photosensitive epilepsy needs to stay the hell away from this - even the original series isn’t good in that regard, but this makes that and even other big offenders like Gaogaigar look like small potatoes.

As for as SRW T goes, it actually raises a bit of a dilemma because they’re including both characters and mecha from both this and the original series, despite the fact that the two stories just won’t make sense if you put them side by side - you’ve got to gimp one or the other. If that’s the case, I hope that they gimp this and give us the original Dunbine’s story. Even if they do that, they’ve got to do some pretty creative rewriting to make it work - honestly I can’t think of a good solution myself. In truth I kind of suspect that it’s only been included at all so that players don’t end up with surplus Aura Battlers and not enough pilots as the case was in X when this series was a units-only member of the roster (although with the fact that Bellvine’s being included this time that might still ironically end up being the case.)

With that, I can now say that I’ve seen everything that will feature in SRW T. I’m glad that I managed to watch all that and still have a couple of months to spare before the game comes out. That said, now there’s time for me to rewatch some old favourites that I’ve not seen in a while - one of those is next.

[artlessictoan]

How I’d do Naruto Next Gen

okok I’ve been wanting to do something more in depth and organised than my usual ranting about how everything is terrible now, so here we go! (though lbr this is just my usual ranting but 10x longer)

for the sake of brevity ha and my own piece of mind I’m not gonna go into how unnecessarily hetro the ending was and how everyone should’ve been gay and hey not every couple absolutely had to get married and/or have kids and also nart should’ve gotten the opportunity to realise that becoming hokage wasn’t necessary to achieve his real goal of becoming someone loved and accepted by others and he deserved so much better tbh and why isn’t sak just running the whole show and why isn’t there more sand sibs, bc let’s face it none of that was ever gonna happen, so these ideas are mostly built with the premise that all the canon couples stay canon and all the kids are still around and the product of those ships and the big plot things that happened (like nart becoming hokage and the like) stay roughly the same

forewarning bc else someone’s bound to say something; if you enjoy the next gen stuff? not a problem! that’s great, people enjoying stuff is a good thing! I wish I could enjoy more stuff, bc enjoying things is far more fun than not enjoying things! everyone has a different taste though and for me – and a lot of other people – the way that the next gen has turned out has been a disappointment, this post is for those people, so we can talk about why we think it’s failed and what we would’ve like to see instead, if you don’t feel that way about it.. well just scroll on past this post and keep enjoying the things you enjoy! have an absolute blast, you’ve earned it!

under the cut bc I am apparently incapable of keeping my rambling concise, there’s 2000 words of only vaguely coherent thoughts and tangents, so maybe get yourself a cuppa and a snack before trudging through it (some of this I’ve said in other posts before but w/e)

---

first off lets change some of the kids’ personalities, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with any of them, but like….. 90% are carbon copies of one of their parents (and mostly their dads but I won’t get into that issue rn) which is ridiculous, bc personality traits aren’t genetic?? like my mum is super chill and sensible and my dad is short-tempered, but I’m an anxious mess and my bro is an anti-social control freak.. we didn’t get any of that from either of our parents

while it’s certainly true that you might be influenced by them (me and mum share a lot of interests and tastes), it’s not a hard and fast rule and I don’t find it realistic that EVERY kid takes after their parents, though I probably wouldn’t have such a problem with it if they were more a mix of both parents than just their dads, so here’s some potential alterations:

Boruto. good fucking lord, no, we did not need a clone of Naruto heading another series, if we wanted to see a rambunctious scamp who gets into trouble but loves his friends a whole lot and has a knack for giving inspirational speeches, then there’s already a whole 700 chap manga for that! one with a far more likable and interesting rambunctious scamp tbqh. so how about we make a few alterations, maybe instead of taking after Nart, Bolt takes a bit more after Hinata? a little quiet and a bit of a pushover, but someone who’ll quickly stick up for a friend and has an ease of communication that’s a bit more Nart? not shy so much as laidback and composed, maybe he isn’t all that interested in being a ninja too, like he’s quite skilled but is a pacifist and would much rather get a civilian job as idk a baker or gardener or something

Shikadai. only a few minor changes here bc I really do like the kid as he is, I’d just like to see him using Tema’s abilities too (and maybe also being just a bit more snarky and unyielding like his mum)

Inojin. I’m kinda torn on this one, bc I do like that he’s a lot like Sai (at least in the anime, he seems to have a pretty different personality from what little we’ve seen of him in the manga???), but I think it’d be pretty interesting if he was just not like either of his parents, maybe if he was very quiet and subdued, but also the mastermind behind all the kid’s pranks, has a mischievous streak that often shocks people, but his friends always love hanging out with him bc of it. also why doesn’t he have Ino’s powers? let’s give him Ino’s powers too

Sand Kids 2.0. ok so at this point we haven’t seen nearly enough of them to say much either way but I have negative faith in kishi and ike so I’ll just say that I want them all to be Gaara’s adopted kids (since it’s still unclear if it’s just Shinki or all of ‘em atm) and I want them to be exactly like this shameless plug for me and @spellfire01‘s versions of them which are the best fucking versions and I will protect my children with my life

now some changes to the original cast (this is where I’m gonna get proper bitter, prepare yourselves):

OH NARUTO MY POOR CHILD WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU I’ve already talked about this but let me just reiterate in as eloquent a way as I can; Naruto would never become a neglectful father. N e v e r. not after the childhood he went through, no matter how much work he had to do as kage, don’t dare fucking try and tell me that Naruto – "It's almost unbearable, isn't it… the pain of being all alone. I know that feeling; I've been there, in that dark and lonely place, but now there are others, other people who mean a lot to me. I care more about them than I do myself, and I won't let anyone hurt them… They rescued me from my loneliness" – Uzumaki would EVER neglect his kids. just fucking don’t. in this version Nart is a doting and involved dad (perhaps a little too much, to the point that his kids find him kinda exhausting and have to ask him to leave them alone sometimes) who sends his clones to work at the office while he hangs out with his family.. I honestly don’t know why he doesn’t already do that

let all the girls out of their houses to do some ninja work for the love of god

poor put-upon Shino-sensei is alright.. but we’ve already had that with Iruka, I’d honestly much rather see the Cool Sensei who keeps all the kids in line without even doing much of anything and has a knack for inspiring them and always has a line of students trailing after him asking to hear more of his awesome ninja stories and everyone always trying to show off when he’s around, bc Shino is literally The Best

have Sauce and Saku be divorcees. seriously, are even the people who ship them happy with how their relationship has turned out? they barely see each other and apparently it’s been that way since chap 699, so why not just have them split up? it really wouldn’t change much, just say that, at some point after Sarada was born, they realised that they were both gay incompatible personality-wise and they were both so busy with their individual work that there wasn’t much of a relationship to lose. not only would this be good for both their characters (there’s no reason they couldn’t still be good friends) and just more sensible all-round, but it would also be a nice way to show that not every childhood romance/first love works out and that’s perfectly fine and normal and they can still live happy, full lives afterwards!

speaking of Sauce, let him spend at least a little bit of time interacting with his friends and family in Konoha, even if he’s still mostly travelling around on important missions he should at least be taking every opportunity to visit his daughter when he’s in the area, seriously, c’mon

Temari got done so dirty in that one episode.. here’re some much better words than I could ever muster but generally I’d want her to be less the ‘scary, overbearing, harsh’ mother and more the ‘strict but cool and sneaky’ mother, like she’d honestly be the type to use reverse psychology and gentle manipulation, she’d make her boy do some seemingly meaningless task that somehow makes him have an epiphany and come back to her when he’s done like “I know what I did wrong now and I’m sorry” than just shout at him and refuse to make dinner (also I just really like to hc that she’s a terrible cook so it’s Shikamaru who does all the cooking anyway)

it’d be really great to see Hina either being the new clan head or at least otherwise involved in Hyuuga clan politics, so we could actually see how she’s working to destroy that whole slavery thing they’ve got going, rather than that plotline just being dropped somewhere around the end of the chunin exam arc and never picked up again (I mean I assume that it’s all supposed to be fixed by now, but that’s not the kinda thing that should happen entirely off-screen) and so we can see her life revolving around something other than Nart and her kids, she’s remarkably capable and had so much potential but she’s been denied every opportunity to really exist as her own character by the writers

Kiba…… what the hell is going on with Kiba? where is he? what is he doing? how’s he feeling these days? is he supposed to be married to that nameless cat lady we saw for a single panel? these are things we shall never know I guess. tbh what I’d really LOVE to see would be Kiba-sensei, just imagine him and Shino both being teachers who work in completely opposite ways, Shino is the quiet, inspiring, lowkey scary one and Kiba is the gigantic fucking dork one who cheers his students on way too loud and makes the classes super fun and joins in the kids games, him and Shino have a class rivalry and Kiba is constantly roping students into joining his attempts to prank Shino (they’ve never once succeeded but oNE DAY)

Ino should be the next head of Konoha’s intelligence division, I will fight kishi on this one

why the actual fuck is oroch still happily living it up in his penthouse lab?? kill the fucker. or at the very least imprison the fucker. just say that Mitsuki was an old project of his that somehow kept developing in his absence, or was a product of research carried out by some lackeys’ years after he’s gone, anything that means I don’t have to accept that everyone has apparently forgiven him for everything and knows that he’s still experimenting on kids but just don’t care

and on that last note: Justice for Yamato 2k17

right now let’s get onto the actual plot/story for this very self-pandering au

make Sarada the main char. while I can see why they would choose to go with Boruto, honestly Salad’s more interesting a character and! A Girl!! Main Character!!!! I NEED IT!!!!!! focus on her goal to be hokage and her struggles with her parents and follow up on that ‘restoring the Uchiha’ plot thread that just.. dropped right off the map somewhere between 699 and 700, her reconciling what her clan was with what she wants to make it

get rid of that weird demon-sensing eye thing that’s going on. and the demon thing in general. and also that jarring post-apocalypse future thing they’re building up. I didn’t slog through over a decade of kishi’s bullshit just so my kids didn’t get to live long, happy lives. make the plot just slice-of-life fluff, nothing more dangerous than a bully, just some kids trying to be awesome ninja in a world that doesn’t really need ninja anymore bc peace and all that

waaay more of Chocho, Himawari and Inojin (at least enough so they all get equal billing)

show how the ninja world has grown and developed since the end of the original series (not just technologically), what do ninja do now that there aren’t any wars and international relationships are at an all-time high? have missions completely gone from being combat and intel based to more about construction and assistance? are ninja numbers actually dropping, favouring civilian jobs in these more peaceful times? how well are people – ninja or not – adjusting to these changes? is learning ninja techniques still encouraged but in a way that’s more about culture and traditions than actual use in combat (in the same way that swordplay today is mostly practiced for performance, fun and sport, rather than out of any real-life practicality)? there are so many interesting things to explore that you don’t even need to be adding in new threats to keep the series entertaining

I’ve said this before, but I think it’d be really cool and cute if after the end of the war and with some drastic changes to the ninja world’s politics, this next gen is less about becoming ninja, than realising that they’ll never be ninja (at least not in the way that their parents were) and how they react to that. maybe they’re frustrated because they hear so many cool stories about the grand battles of the previous generation and they want to be able to do those things too damnit! so the kids are just going around trying to be super-awesome ninja in a world that doesn’t really need ninja anymore, picking fights and trying to make their boring d-rank missions seem more important and dangerous than they really are, maybe at some point they learn a bit more about how hard and traumatising that life was for their parents and why the world had to change, until they eventually decide that if the role of a ninja has to change, then together they’re gonna discover what that new role will be, what will being a ninja really mean in this new, peaceful world?

and, a final ending note: fuck ike’s sickening treatment of Sarada with regards to her sexualised presentation and the disgusting reveal that someone taught Boruto (a young child!) the sexy jutsu. Let The Kids Be Kids 2k17

[madara-fate]

Is Naruto Shippuden ending with episode 500? D: I was hoping we could see an episode about SS's travels or at least some SS moments in general. It's so frustrating to see that literally every couple besides SS (well, also ChoKarui, but its popularity and importance are nowhere near SS's) received several beautiful moments in the latest episodes. Why doesn't SS get anything even though SS is the only couple who was canonised in the manga (thus literally being the main one)? Why is SP like this?~1

There would have been so many ways to create at least an episode about SS’s travels. And unlike the latest episodes which could have mainly been imagined just by reading the Konoha novel, we have no details about SS’s travels, about how Sasuke and Sakura were feeling while travelling for the first time together as so on. This part of the story is so important and yet completely overlooked by SP. An episode showing all of this would have been amazing and really needed for the sake of the story.~2

An episode about SS’s travels would have been much more interesting than the current episodes and I am pretty sure that it’d have been welcomed really well, especially by the Japanese fans. Also, it was really needed in order to once and for all make the fact that only Sasuke and Sakura travelled together, without Karin/Team Taka being involved in their travels (as the online translations wrongly suggested), clear.~3 

This way, the antis would finally stop purposely using the wrong online translations and would eventually stick to the Viz Media one, which is the official English translation. So, an episode about SasuSaku’s travels would be extremely important for the sake of the story in every possible way. But I guess we sadly won’t ever receive it, which is a really bad move on SP’s part.~4

But what was I expecting actually? SP not only ignores SS, but also animates even their canon moments poorly. On the other hand, some filler couple moments (like most of the moments from the latest episodes) are animated perfectly. Honestly, from a completely objective point of view, it is more than obvious that SP has something against SS for some reasons. And, sadly, SS is the only couple that keeps being treated like this, even though in the manga it literally is the main one.~5

I mean, there was a post which contained GIFs with all the Naruto couples (except CK). All of those moments besides the SS one didn’t appear in the actual manga and thus were filler moments. Only the SS moment appeared in the manga (and it was the forehead poke, which canonised SS on panel, so of course it was of great importance) and, despite this, it still was by far the worst animated out of all of those scenes. The filler moments were all animated really nicely.~6

SP certainly was and still is a big part of the reason why SS is sadly so disliked (especially by the fans who only watch the anime or don’t pay attention to details). If SP had at least tried to animate all of the SS canon moments properly and had completely respected the way they were drawn by Kishi (such as not erasing Sasuke’s smirk from chapter 632), SS would certainly be looked at in a different light now. Not to mention what would be now if SP had added some filler SS moments as well.~7

Okay I have to play Devil’s Advocate here.

SS wasn’t canonised on panel - 699 and the forehead poke didn’t confirm SS as officially canon, 700 did that. If the manga had ended on 699, I really don’t see why people would think that SS was confirmed as 100% canon because that’s not what the forehead poke did.

SP didn’t overlook SS travels - Sasuke and Sakura’s time together wasn’t in any of the written material to begin with. What they did overlook was Sakura Hiden and so far, Gaiden too. And while this decision certainly says something about them, SS’s travel’s weren’t overlooked by them because they weren’t part of any of the material that they were adapting.

[tumblunni]

Digimon World Next Order!! For once a game that ISNT a weirdly named sequel, even though it still sounds like one. 'Order Points' is the name of the revamped battle system. ^_^ Ive only been playing for about four hours but so far I'm really enjoying it! RANDOM RAMBLING ABOUT MY JOY, AHOY!

* First off, its a sequel to the original Digimon World rather than to Cyber Sleuth, so do a bit of research before you buy it, I'd say. Its more of a tamagotchi hybrid rpg than a regular turn-based one. Lots of hugging virtual pets and feeding em snacks! But this has always been my fave genre so I'm happyyyyyy~ * I named my two digimon Hershey and Zephyr cos they started off as terriermon and lopmon. But they immediately diverged off into wildly different digivolution paths instead, so now the names dont make sense XD By some grand coincidence they ended up becoming snowogremon and icedevimon at the same time, so that's what they are now! :3 my popsicle buddies! * Hershey's favourite food is mushrooms/vegetables, and Zephyr is a bit of a diva who hates everything except mineral water. Its funny since Hershey is the fragile magic user of the duo, and then we have this hulking ice shoulderblades yeti being all 'no my carbs'. DUDE WHY U GO AGAINST UR EVOLUTION REQUIREMENTS aaa but i luv u anywayyyyy * Hershey lucked out and got a super powerful technique early on by random chance, this thing that costs 700 mp to deal 700 damage, when everything else is like 50 power. And then they lucked right out of it again, cos Icedevimon cant use that move XD fifteen seconds of power as a rookie... * why do the levels mean basically nothing, yo? the game says this redvegiemon is level 3 but its stronger than the level 6 everything else in the area. Maybe the game is just dumb and levels dont take into account digivolution level? Like.. this is stronger cos its not a rookie, and they didnt even bother to make the level counter say 13 or something so the player could actually tell  Well, now i know to ignore that thing entirely and just judge on their digivolutions! * The difficulty is far lower in the actual raising aspect yet higher in battles... its weird... * Its also a shame that training no longer has unique animations! It doesnt have any animations at all, its just push button dispense stats. They did at least clear up the problem of having to walk manually between each training area and waste valuable time, now there's just one training area that contains all the different trainings in a neat quick navigation menu. But its also a bit less charming and less gamelike when its JUST menus. BUT on the other hand they did mitigate it a bit by throwing in new features like a roulette roll to get bonus stats, and a whole system of complex ways you can win an extra turn on it. (Training next to each other, training opposite skills, having max happiness, someone having just digivolved, one stat gets a bonus turn each day at random...) * Its really nice that the intro of the game has you meet your digimon partners in fully evolved mega form and have a few scenes of dialogue with them before they get poofed down to digieggs by the villain. It helps mitigate the weirdness of your partner digimon being the only digimon that cant talk! * BUT ALSO. NOW THEY TALK. !!!!!! * You get some cute random dialogue popups on the bottom of the screen as you adventure around, and each digivolution has a different set of stuff to say. Its still very minimal and can get repetitive, but its adorable and helps you get more attatched to these lil doofs! * Also its hella nice that you can now pick to play as a girl, for the first time in the tamagotchi-style digimon games! I actually think her design looks cooler than the dude, he just has a streak of blue hair while she has this awesome poisonous-looking striped ponytail that bleeds pixels as you run! Badass! * ALSO thank you for english dubbed dialogue yo. Its not perfect but then again namco bandai games rarely are XD And they included an option to have the original japanese voices if you prefer! * I missed Jijimon so much. Why he never get to appear in anything aside from this spinoff series? He was in one episode of Tamers but that was an awful cameo He has THE MOST STEREOTYPICAL grandpa voice in the english dub and i luv im * The environment design so far is a lot more basic and boring than the old ps1 game for some reason? It seems to fall prey to the usual ps4 designer logic that making stuff BIG makes it automatically good, even if its just annoyingly huge spaces to traverse with barely anything in them. And so far its just been Generic Field A, B and C, with only occasional stuff like a giant battery to let you know its the digital world. And the main town is super small now that everything training has been smooshed into one building... * Its also a lot less sandboxy and interesting to explore, and the digimon recruitment quests kinda suck. I've already found three guys and all of them were fetch quests to gather a certain amount of an item. And now you also have to gather certain amounts of an item from special gathering spots in order to actually build the new shops, which is annoying because its in these huge boring maps that you have to backtrack thru again and again * The battle system is VASTLY IMPROVED, holy SHIT! Its like they somehow read my brain?? Back when i played the first digimon world, i would always get so frustrated at the auto battle and its bad AI that i'd just mash the X button even when i had nothing to do. Somehow I thought it would make my digimon stronger. AND NOW IT ACTUALLY DOES!!! The X button has been remapped to the new cheer function, and if you cheer at the right moment you get more or less Order Points. if you use them you can manually select to use a move at the right timing, use a move without consuming MP, or use a special super move! (waaaay easier than the shoulder buttons thing in the old game) It spices up a very inactive battle system! * Oh and HELL YEAH FOR QUIDE PUZZLE SYSTEM THINGIE! In the first game you had NO WAY OF KNOWING what requirements you needed to meet for each digivolution, or what digimon could turn into what, until after you'd already unlocked it. You had to consult fanmade guides if you wanted to try 100% completion. Now the guide is an actual ingame menu where you unlock tips as rewards for various good actions as a virtual pet owner. You'll likely never unlock all the guide points for a particular digimon stage before you're already past it, unless you raise the same one a bazillion times. But the lil tips every now and then can be useful enough to help you choose which direction to take your training! Just a lil 'oh, ive already hit the HP requirement for this one? i guess I'll try and go for it!' or 'oh darn this one requires maximum deliquency, i guess i wont get it so I should try for something else'. Its useful. My only complaint is that maybe the way to unlock them could have been less random and less easy? Its just a random chance whenever they eat food/get praised after a good thing. * Ultimately so far the few bad points arent bad enough to ruin the enjoyment for me. It just seems a little soulless and rushed, maybe? But I'd enjoy literally anything in this genre, I've been waiting so long for a sequel that even if this was terrible I'd still adore it! And its far from terrible, its just a lil bland. It probably wont have as much replayability as the first game, but it still feels like it'd be fun for one playthrough! * Also, Hershey and Zephyr are my new lil best friends. SUCH A CUTE GIANT MONSTERS YES YOU IS        

[recentanimenews]

5 Anime Fighting Games That Will Punch Your Face Off

It's really weird to me when anime characters aren't fighting. I watch Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai and think "But why doesn't bunny girl just take her TRUE BEAST FORM and annihilate that dude?" And in all twelve episodes of Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san, not once did Honda unleash his THOUSAND MANGA SKELETON SMASH on an annoying customer. It's major narrative oversights like this that draw me back to fighting games that are based on anime and manga where everyone is fighting, all the time, often for little to no reason. And it's why I'll wind up playing Jump Force when it comes out. 

  Regardless of your feelings on the playable characters (It's 2019. The Jump Force roster should logically be the cast of My Hero Academia and then maybe Krillin), there's no doubt that Jump Force is going to deliver on spiky haired anime protagonists beating the tar out of other spiky haired anime protagonists. But it doesn't come out for... 4 days. What am I going to do until then? Play the critically accliamed Resident Evil 2, a game that critics and fans alike have deemed to be almost perfect and has seemingly revitalized the survival horror genre? Easy, there. I'm gonna play some underrated anime fighting games, and I'm gonna start with...

  JUMP ULTIMATE STARS

  I wrote an entire article about this game but honestly, every article on the internet, regardless of its topic, should show tribute to Jump Ultimate Stars. After you create your team (from the 56 playable characters and the 249 support characters) by assembling them on a manga page, you unleash them in arenas based on various manga series. The combat is fast and intense, and the art style is perfect. If the characters on an issue of Weekly Shonen Jump suddenly leapt from the page and began strangling eachother, it would look like this game. 

  Now, Jump Ultimate Stars never got an official English release, so if you want to play it on your DS or 3DS, you're probably going to have to pull up a GameFaqs walkthrough at the same time. But it's not that hard once you figure out the menus. And honestly, it's pretty worth it, especially if you've spent years thinking "The cast of Dr. Slump COULD beat up Sasuke."

  DRAGON BALL Z: BUDOKAI

  I didn't watch Dragon Ball Z growing up, because I was raised on limited cable in the South, which means that if I wanted to watch anime, I either woke up at 5:30 in the morning to catch Pokémon on UPN, or I hoped that Pat Robertson ended The 700 Club with a Kamehameha. And so, my first exposure to it was through my roommate's PlayStation 2 games in college. I take that back. My FIRST exposure to it was through my friend's fan art in sixth grade. He drew Vegeta bleeding from the mouth, and then when a girl he liked asked him what he was drawing, he threw away the picture and said "Just stupid stuff." And I never respected Dustin again.

But my friend Tim, who unabashedly displayed a seemingly endless collection of three Dragon Ball Z games, supplied me with a great introduction to the series. Now, especially when you compare them to the beautiful, measured combat of Dragon Ball FighterZ, the Budokai series can feel clunky. They seem less like a tounrament between the world's greatest martial artists, and more like two drunken Super Saiyans fist fighting outside of a Chili's. However, they are so fun and I love them. 

ONE PIECE GRAND ADVENTURE/ONE PIECE: BURNING BLOOD

Yeah, I'm putting two One Piece games on this list. One Piece is kind of my "ride or die" series and it's my list, so I can and will do what I want with it. 

If you've ever listened to the absolute banger that is the 4Kids One Piece pirate rap, and you thought "If only all of One Piece could be more like this," you are in soooooo much luck. The opening cinematic to One Piece Grand Adventure includes what can only be generously described as "rapping," and it includes all of the "random record scratches and misplaced hip hop! Kids these days like that, right?" that the 4kids opening had. Also, it is dubbed by the 4Kids cast as well, so that's kinda fun. 

    One Piece: Burning Blood was weird for me at first because, by the time I started playing it, nearly everyone who played it casually had left. So, by the time my thirty minute matchmaking session had ended, the people that I was playing against were god-tier, S-Class warriors, much more akin to the secret, borderline invincible bosses that you run into unexpectedly in JRPGs than actual players. However, in retreating to the single player options, I found solace, and I believe when it comes to arena battle anime games, Burning Blood is one of the best. Also, after playing Burning Blood, Monkey D. Garp is my next choice for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC. Don't overthink it. 

  YU YU HAKUSHO 2: KAKUTOU NO SHO

  The aesthetics of the Yu Yu Hakusho anime are PERFECT for the Super Nintendo, and that's why the Street Fighter-esque YU YU HAKUSHO 2: KAKUTOU NO SHO is such a pleasure to play. Its story mode takes you up through the end of the Dark Tournament arc, which means that you spend about a third of the game fighting Younger Toguro. But considering that Yusuke vs Toguro is one of the best rivalries in the history of fiction, I have absolutely no problems with this. It'd be like complaining that I got to eat strawberry shortcake too many times this week. Why am I complaining? IT'S STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE, BRO.

  Now, this is another game that only got an official release in Japan, so if you don't want to import a copy, you could play Yu Yu Hakusho: Dark Tournament for the PS2. It's not a bad game, but something about it feels off, like the protagonists often move super slowly in comparison to the demons that are pummeling them. I have to wait for Kuwabara to deliver an uppercut, and meanwhile, Chu has already punched me in the groin seven times.

   NARUTO: ULTIMATE NINJA STORM SERIES

  Talking about the visuals in a fighting game can be odd, because fighting games never really give you a chance to "stop and smell the roses." If you wait to say "Dang, I LOVE how Kakashi's outfit looks," Sakura will have already pulled out your spine. Also, the lazier anime fighting games tend to hope that you'll be too wowed by the fact that you're playing as familiar characters to even care about the graphics, which is like hoping that you'll be excited to see your Uncle at the next family reunion, without noticing that he's currently made of slugs.

  That said, the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm games are quite awesome to look at, with really vibrant, energetic colors. And the gameplay is super fluid, living up to the rad fights in the actual show. Also, exploring the Hidden Leaf village in the first game and doing training quests between fights was way less of a chore than I thought it would be. Overall, the Ultimate Ninja Storm series takes what could be some really lazy cash-ins and turns them into great games.

  What's your favorite anime fighting game? What do you think about the games listed here? Are you gonna play Jump Force? Let us know in the comments!

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  Daniel Dockery is a writer and editor for Crunchyroll that uses Twitter for the dumbest reasons. On Jump Force, he wants to main Luffy, Younger Toguro, and Hisoka. 

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com