Gah, the way the characters in white cat legend think that pushing those they love away will protect them. Qiu Qingzhi with Li Bing. Li Bing with Chen Shi and the rest. Alibaba with Vice President Shangguan. "It's for your own good" they say and they truly believe it. Even Chen Jiu with Chen Shi ("don't come to Shendu").
The way that the only way to break this cycle was for those being pushed away to push back. How, when even Chen Shi (the most openly caring of all the characters) had given up, his previous actions meant that Wang Qi and co. were still willing to keep trying. They were the four who had been deliberately coasting along prior to the start of the series, doing only enough in their jobs to not entirely lose their paychecks (and not even doing a particularly good job at that). And yet, because of the impact Li Bing and Chen Shi had had on them, *they're* the ones to say "stop pushing us away" and go out of their way to bridge the gap to Li Bing. Li Bing, who time and again, pushed others away, certain he had to keep others out of danger, and yet also terrified of what letting people close would do to *him* if they discovered him as he "truly" was.
It wasn't too late for Li Bing. He had people in his corner willing to push past his attempts to keep them out and he was (eventually) able to accept them. Accept that they accepted him.
Not everyone is so lucky.
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brother crab's winter 2024 parting thoughts: high card s2
WHAT THE HELL
HIGH CARD IS GOOD?!
tl;dr very flashy and aesthetic, consistently good in that regard, but the story was not always gripping to me. however, with the ultimate payoff in the last three eps, totally worth it imo
full review:
wow wow wow i'm kind of glad i fell way behind on anime and had the last three eps of s2 to binge all at once because hoooly shit i enjoyed that immensely
at no point did i think high card was bad, but it definitely had moments where it didn't fully grab me. there were times when it felt like all flash, no substance
and it's definitely not perfect, i have some serious and fairly significant gripes with it. mainly i'm really bummed that leo, wendy, and vijay never really got fully fleshed out. i mean i get it, finn's the main character and chris is the thinly veiled love interest also important so obviously they're going to take up most of the time, but i really feel like the other members of the crew had so much unexplored potential (especially wendy and vijay, because leo did sort of get his moment as a factor in the old man yaoi situation)
speaking of which THE OLD MAN YAOI!! man there were a lot of moving pieces in this show, and sometimes they came together in messy ways (or didn't really come together at all... some bits do still feel pretty disjointed and jumpy to me, tbh)
but overall the payoff of the s2 finale was absolutely worth it to me, particularly since it dealt with my favorites of those moving pieces: the old man yaoi and the sudden YANDERE ONIISAN ARC
i find myself really wishing the show had gone harder on both of those threads sooner, but like... honestly i'm not disappointed with how they played out. the whole theodore and ban thing could not have been more tropey (YEARS of loathing only for a "the one i wanted to protect all along was... you" and then dying for each other like HELLO yes an absolute tropefest BUT TROPES THAT I LOVE. GOOD FOR THOSE TOXIC DOOMED YAOI MFERS)
tilt has always been fascinating to me right from the character design and i am more or less satisfied with how things played out for him too, though i kind of wish we'd had more of this development spread throughout the series. i guess it was there, but... i dunno. in some ways feels like there could have been More (but i may be biased)
like you gotta feel bad for him, it's a sad story, but also that extreeemely creepy unhinged yandere oniisan "i have been stalking you i literally have a wall with giant blown up photos of you i hate the other guy who is calling himself your brother" sequence was SO FUCKING DELICIOUS LIKE WTF??? stunned and absolutely blown away by how hard they went on that, what a delight
(ironically it makes me think about how unhinged matakara in bucchigiri?! just doesn't work while unhinged tilt in high card works super well, but this is not about bucchigiri?! so i won't get too into that)
i am still admittedly just. kind of like. idk. i go back and forth on finn and chris, as characters and as partners. i don't dislike them but they aren't always all that compelling to me. sometimes they definitely are, but sometimes they just fall a bit flat to me. this probably isn't an issue with them as characters, though, just a matter of taste. i occasionally found the chemistry between them lacking as well, but sometimes it was really on point
same feeling about the crew dynamics in general. i looove a good like heist crew or spy agency crew, whatever it is, when the dynamics just click. and sometimes they didn't, here. i am too sleepy to articulate it properly right now but it just felt like there was something missing, some pieces not really fitting together. i didn't dislike any of the characters, but just... i guess wanted more team shenanigans? maybe there was no time for that but it would have been nice (like this is one show that could have done with a few filler and/or fluff episodes, imo!)
anyway. christ. my eye emoji-ing at tilt based solely on his character design finally paid off after two gay ass seasons lmao. good night
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