#so many incredibly written plot twists that make complete sense without being too predictable

[kittykandreil]

“the croaking” never beating the best webtoon ever allegations. got me screaming crying shaking and scratching the walls because of some gay bird men

[bylerly]

alright everyone. after my rush of emotions after that season, i’ve had time to decompress, and make an actually cohesive list of my thoughts about the season. as you could probably guess - MAJOR SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!

first, let’s get the (much) shorter list out of the way. here’s what I enjoyed:

the acting. i want to mention how good millie was, because she was fantastic, but i almost feel like i shouldn’t, bc el took SO MUCH screen and plot time, that millie was given every opportunity to be good. she doesn’t really need any more special mention. otherwise - noah (with the little he was given) and sadie were particularly great. so were winona & david, but that goes without saying.

the elmax friendship. these two deserved it. and max bringing el out of her shell, showing her how to become her own person.... incredible. 10/10 i love them both

alexei. feels weird saying this, but he was probably the new addition I enjoyed watching the most. it would have been kind of cool to see him live past season 3.

an lgbt+ confirmed character. this one is a little.... tricky for me. as happy as I am that there is a queer woman written into the show... I feel like it’s a cop out to not have to confirm will’s sexuality. robin confirms her sexuality in less than a season, but after three with will, we still only get ~subtext~? still, this is a positive portion, so.... I guess that was something I was happy with

el moving in with the byers at the end. finally. this is one of the only things that is keeping me excited for s4. i guess i can only hope for there to FINALLY be some good willel interactions next season, but if this season has taught me anything, it’s not to get my hopes too high :-)

jancy ending s3 on a good note. parts of their storyline were fantastic, some were disappointing. but i really dug their dynamic, and the realistic struggle between the two of them, with nancy not really understanding jonathan’s class struggles, and jonathan not grasping the weight of the misogyny being thrown at nancy. their final moments at the empty byers house at the end were especially lovely.

el no longer being OP, and not being undefeatable. i love el. i really, genuinely do. i love her character, i love her traits, i lover her power. but the duffers were relying too heavily on her to constantly save the day with her powers, and it was happening too often. one of the faults of s2 was the constant thought of how easily el could’ve fought off all these threats if she was just there. i think it’s incredibly interesting to not only see her get completely worn out, but totally lose her powers. like mike said, i’m sure they’ll come back, but i want so badly for el to not just be defined by her powers.

a platonic m/f friendship. yes, one of them is confirmed queer, and they would’ve probably been romantically linked if she was straight. but i’ll take what i can get when it comes to this. platonic opposite sex relationships?? r i s e

now for the meat of my thoughts ~ what I didn’t like:

mike’s characterization. the writers completely made him into a dick this season. i get it, he’s a teenager, so he’s going to be an asshole sometimes. hell, in a recent post, I defended that, saying it’s good writing. but I underestimated just how awful he’d be, completely blowing off his friends for any chance for a second alone with el. I understand that he loves his girlfriend of course, but s1-2 mike loved his friends just as much. he was so utterly unlikable this season, that it seemed like he was a different character.

lucas as comic relief. this is so lazy, and i’m so angry for both the character and caleb, both of whom deserve so much better. he really had nothing to do if it wasn’t related to max, and the writers further reduced him down to a one-dimensional, kind of dumb, mediocre boyfriend, and that is not the highly intelligent, brave, kind lucas that i know and love.

will’s sidelining. god, this made absolutely no sense. noah fucking shined last season. he stole pretty much the entire thing. every critic, even those who disliked the season, had nothing but good things to say about his performance. furthermore, will has so much potential in so many different directions in so many aspects of his character. however, once he revealed to his friends that he was feeling the upside down/MF’s presence... they may as well have written out his character. he was sidelined almost to the point of background character. they gave him very little to do emotionally after that castle byers scene, and even fewer lines.

total lack of willel scenes. phew, if this wasn’t a bummer. will spoke a single line to el, and maybe one or two throwaway lines about her. if there is one thing most of the fans can agree on, it’s that will and el have the biggest connection to the upside down, the biggest unspoken connection, the most parallels, and the most intriguing potential relationship... and they really just said “fuck it” and didn’t have them interact at all. (that’s poor writing folks!) they better make up for this now that they’re living together.

amount of eleven scenes. i love her so dearly. i really do. and i’m so happy she grew into her own, not through mike or hopper. but the amount of el plot and screen time this season was actually difficult to watch. every other scene centered around her. so many characters and so much of the story went undeveloped, while she got way, way more than was necessary. additionally, take any kid’s plot (other than dustin), and guaranteed, it revolved around el. people were starting to catch on that the show was favoring her character more than even most shows’ mains.... and this season took it to a level i actual didn’t think it would.

the comedy. it was so awkwardly written. so much of it threw off the pace of the show. it seemed forced, and just... not very stranger things-esque, where the comedy was typically well-written and blended into dialogue.

the baddies. this was a huge letdown, too. i understand that the monster was large, but it was far less menacing to me than, say, the MF’s physical form. it had gore points, sure. it felt incredibly boring and predictable. in the same vein, i thought the ‘zombie’ style storyline of heather & co. would be deeper than that, but that was literally all it was. again... not interesting to me. billy was a rehash as well. the russians definitely had potential, but even that plot wound up being incredibly one-dimensional.

billy’s screentime. this was one of the things i was absolutely furious about. he got more screentime than the party (minus el) combined. they wanted for us so badly to empathize with him, to humanize him... i’m sorry, but you wrote a character that almost killed a boy for being black, that abuses his sister, and is a misogynistic asshole. abuse doesn’t excuse that, and it’s insulting to abuse survivors to say that billy inevitably became this way because of his dad, and that he deserves our uwus for it... and actually got el’s. he took screen time away from characters who desperately needed it, and that’s something i will never look at the duffers the same way for.

the scoops troop. I wanted to love erica... but i feel so indifferent to her. she was way too much this season. and robin. again, i love that she’s confirmed queer. and i dug her character more. but even then... i don’t know. i would have rather never had her introduced, and allowed established characters to have been better developed. and as a whole, the whole storyline of the troop was just what I feared: underwhelming and awkwardly placed.

high steve & robin. won’t elaborate on this too much, bc there’s not much to elaborate on. it just felt so wildly out of place and unnecessary.

that dustin/suzie number. what the hell was that? what could have been a 20 second joke was stretched out WAY too long and was bizarrely placed. just because you have an actor from broadway, doesn’t mean he needs to sing. and even if he does sing... you couldn’t have found a better time or situation? i literally was just staring at my screen in disbelief as that whole thing happened. entirely unneeded.

the amount of flashbacks. i understand most casual viewers wouldn’t remember certain things because of how long it’s been. but they literally put a recap at the beginning of the season. that’s what it’s for. and there were also plenty from like.... the episode before??? the amount they included took away so much time, that it almost just seemed like they didn’t have enough footage, and they had to fill their time stamp somehow. at some point, it just becomes insulting to the audience’s intelligence.

the overall tone. this season did not feel like stranger things in the slightest. off the top of my head, the castle byers scene and the byeler scene in mike’s garage were the exceptions. the first few episodes did have some moments. but overall... it kind of felt like some weird, high budget commercial or something. the charm, distinct aesthetic, and nuance of seasons 1 and 2 was non-existent.

the post-credit scene. there was some last-minute hype up in the reviews for this. was that supposed to be shocking in some way? i suppose this is more the fault of the reviewers who hyped it, but... really? a demodog? we’ve seen that before... i guess more the point was to show that the russians officially have some kind of technology for this. but still, an underwhelming reveal. more intriguing to me, was if hopper was the american in the cell he mentioned at the start of it. or maybe brenner?

the neutral:

that ending. on one hand, it was incredibly predictable. they literally placed an obvious shot of it in the trailer (easy to deduce that the byers had moved out, and that it was fall, so it was an epilogue scene). i was convinced that there would be a twist element they weren’t showing us, but nope. on the other hand, i thought some things were done beautifully (which wasn’t exactly a trend this season). as i mentioned, i loved the jancy moments. i really did like the hopper voiceover, although it was a little trope-y and heavy-handed... i still got a little emo, ngl. those goodbye hugs were somethin’. and, as i said before... el! moving in! with the byers! gimme

so uh... that’s it, i guess. no one really asked, but i needed to get my thoughts out. what did you guys think of the season?

[fictionstuff]

Fate Series

Plot: https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/6605

Fate/stay night (2006) + Fate/Stay Night UBW Episodes: 24 + 26

Main Characters: Shirou Emiya Saber Rin Tohsaka Archer Lancer Gilgamesh

The Fate series is one of my favourites, it features about everything I could wish for. I never played the actual game, so I can't say much about that or compare, but I don't think that's entirely necessary, if you tend to read more about what you've seen, because no way can an anime convey everything a game can. It simply doesn't have the time and while 24 or 26 episodes aren't short, i'd love to have seen more.

The story is almost always the complete same in every fate anime. It's about the Holy Grail War, about an artifact that can grant you any wish. Participants in this war are called „masters“ while they each have a „servant“ a holy spirit summoned from the past. It's about life & death, a game of survival, survival of the fittest, but there are many many twists and people with different motives and wishes. It actually never gets boring.

While the original Deen animation from 2006 and UBW from way later aren't the same anime, I'm still going to be talking about both, because they're from the same universe, with the same main characters, but different routes from the original game. I definitely recommend to start with the older animation, because it provides the ground work. UBW just neglects what everyone should already know, because Deen already provided countless information with their version in 2006.

It's about legends, mystical beings and magic... and we follow Emiya's footsteps in this war and really, he's not even halfway a good main character. Something like common sense is only aqcuired very late in the Deen version and while he's a much better character in UBW, he's still quite foolish and his motivation to save everything and everyone gets tiresome, because he's not as strong as many other characters in here, but it's nothing that would make me stop watching. Emiya only gets dragged into the war by accident (or maybe fate?), having accidentally watched a fight between servants and of course, he's been spotted by Lancer, one of the best servants in the goddamn universe (I just can't unlike him... :c)

With this kind of set up, the end can easily be predicted. Emiya has to win, but the actual journey is much more exciting than I would have thought. Every character gets a decent amount of screen time and while there are three main routes, every route tells you more about all the characters in here. I still have to watch the last route, cause I will wait for all three films to be out, before I even intend to get myself involved. Otherwise the waiting will get the best of me and I hate that. I am about as impatient as I can be.

Unlike Emiya, who's a little nut, we have many other great characters!!! There's Rin, a very strong and kind of „tsundere“ girl, who knows magic and whose servant is from the archer class. Archer is about the... biggest twist in the whole anime. He's so unlike Emiya, that it's rather ironic. I don't want to spoil the fun though, I just loved the twist to bits. We do have other great servants, Lancer, as mentioned, who sadly doesn't have the biggest role but it was enough time to watch him grow and make his own decisions. Another pretty servant is Gilgamesh, but I never truly knew what to think about, other than that he's just incredibly hot and cool, but also one of the strongest servants, a very dangerous one, a god.

While the Deen version has a decent kind of design, animation, UBW will knock you right off your socks. Best animation ever from ufotable, no doubt. This goes for Zero as well. UBW features a different route from the Deen version and honestly, to watch the story develop differently just because of one or two different choices is just so amazing to watch. Fate remains one of the best series up to date.

Points: 9.5/10

Fate/Zero Episodes: 25

Main Characters: Kiritsugu Emiya (Saber) Irisviel von Einzbern Kirei Kotomine (Assassin) Tokiomi Tohsaka (Archer) Waver Velvet (Rider)

Zero is the prequel of f/sn. It's 1st in chronoligical order and yet I wouldn't want anyone to watch this first. It makes much more sense to watch Deen and UBW firstly, while Deen definitely has be watched before Zero. It gives you a much better view of everything in the past and things in f/sn start to make much more sense once you watch Zero, it's just much more fun to follow the events in the past to know how everything happened, because you know what happened, but you don't know how it all came to be.

Zero features a wide range of characters again and believe me, this Emiya is a much better protagonist. He's the adoptive father of Shirou Emiya, the main protag of f/sn. He's a ruthless assassin and he's got strong beliefs and follows them through without hesitation. Sometimes I didn't know whether to think of him as good or bad, neither did Saber, but I know that I loved watching his story and that he's damn badass character.

Zero seems overall much more mature than f/sn, it features less teenagers. Most masters are adults, but they still want the grail nonetheless, maybe even more than the people in f/sn. Zero is the answer to all your problems in the sequel, believe me. Each of the masters here also learn from their servants, they're actually everything the masters want to be or always wanted to be. Waver and Rider are the best examples for that.

If you did watch the sequel, then you know what the end of Zero will be, but everything leading up to that point, of the chaos, will have you excited, ready to just keep watching until it's over. Saber is still the very strong Artoria Pendragon, as in f/sn, but the archer class is taken over by Gilgamesh, a the servant of Rin's father. Just watching everything find its way to the sequel was so very enjoyable, that I'd love to watch it again some time.

The thing about fate is that even the Antagonists are important factors and get their time to shine or make you shudder in despair. Zero also fetures great designs and beautiful, splendid animations by ufotable, so even if you're not into the story, it's still way too beautiful to not give it some of your attention.

Points: 9.5/10

Fate/Apocrypha Episodes: 25

Now onto a part of the series that I am not that fond of, for various reasons. It differs from the original fate series. In here we have two main fractions fighting each other and once one has won, these allies will be fighting one another for the grail. We have a new class here, Ruler, our dear Saber look-a-like, but Saber is of course once again part of the story. I feel like it's a vital part of every show by now. Anyhow, Ruler watches over the war (it feels like a game honestly) and only steps in when she deems it to be necessary.

We have a whole lot of information dumping at the beginning, because Apocrypha acts like f/sn never happened, like it's not part of the same universe. There are waaaay too many characters in here and half of them don't even get one second of the screen time. They die waaaaay too quickly, there's barely a chance to get to know them or why they're even fighting. Instead the focus is one our main protagonist Sieg, a homunculus that should've been a tool in the war for the grail. While I did want to like Sieg, the anime didn't give me much of an opportunity, because Sieg goes through something akin to a development, but changes way too quickly and goes out to save the world with Ruler. The romance in here just didn't sit right with me, it felt forced countless of times.

The big twists in the anime happen within the second half, which can be considered the better half. It gets much more interesting from there on and finally they shed some light on the antagonist, who's a pretty fleshed out cool guy. Sadly they rushed the ending and while the fight was fun to watch, it left too many questions unanswered and that's not something I like. At all.

Points: 6.7/10

Fate/extra

Plot: A technological hell masquerading as paradise, Tsukimihara Academy is an artificial high school that serves as the setting for the next Holy Grail War. Created by the Moon Cell computer, the school is inhabited by Earth-projected souls who have even the slightest aptitude for being a "Master." Of these 256 souls, 128 will be chosen for the main tournament and granted a Servant. With all of the Masters selected, the Academy activates a purge, targeting the remaining lifeforms for elimination. Awakening in a pool of his own blood, Hakuno Kishinami refuses to die. Fueled by unknown feelings of hatred, he vows to fight for survival. As he struggles to escape from a relentless pursuer, he finds a crimson blade plunged into the ground; and by pulling it out, Hakuno summons his own Servant, Saber, who instantly destroys his pursuer in a flurry of rose petals. With his newfound power, Hakuno must now begin his journey to Moon Cell's core, the Angelica Cage. There, he will unveil the reason for this artificial world and the secrets of his own blood-soaked past. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

Episodes: 10+3

Points: 5.75/10

I've always been a fan of the Fate universe, especially the main line (FSN/FZ) but the recent additions to the universe (apocrypha and extra) are not at all exciting for someone who has no prior knowledge to the source material. I do have the game for the switch, but I haven't touched it until now. Once I have the time I shall play it through and then get to experience the whole story. Extra takes place in an alternate timeline, it's a war like setup by a computer and the characters are partakers in the war inside of what seems to be an endless tower with many different floors. The setting is regrettably not explained in detail, which makes it hard to grasp, because I was confused for at least 13 episodes, before I read up on the terms they used, but that still left me mostly in the dust about the entire plot.

Our main character is Hakuno, who is sadly not much of an exciting protagonist. His servant is Saber, who is perhaps more interesting, but there's no further development to both of them. Hakuno is much of an oddball, more like an anti-hero. He has no clear cutting motivation for taking part in the war except for wanting to survive. The chemistry and the philosophical conversations between them is interesting and sometimes even funny, but that's until episode 3 or 4 where it starts getting kind of boring.

We have no real supporting cast either. There are masters and servants on every floor, but they're vanishing as quickly as they appeared, because the whole plot is mostly about fighting, surviving and ascending to end the computer. Most characters are only used to bring the story along honestly, they serve no further purpose and there's hardly any feelings you can develop for characters that barely have 10 minutes of screen time before dying.

The story line is completely confusing to me, honestly. It's not that I am completely new to the universe, but maybe playing the game is essential to understanding the setting and the characters, because the fighting scenes are well done, although I am not a big fan of shaft.

Fate/extra has been a complete disappointment for me, hence I can only give it 6 points.