#voice acting?? also incredible like they literally had to get the biggest va in the industry just to make ataru somewhat tolerable

[oddmeu]

so i just watched the first ep of the urusei yatsura remake and that was probably the most annoying thing ive ever seen in my entire life

[spectralscathath]

do robyn :3c:

Send me a RWBY character and I’ll tell you:

Robyn Hill

My top three ships for the character

Clover/Robyn (Lucky Shot is my OTP), Qrow/Robyn (Jailbyrds is a spite ship and I’ll admit it), Roman/Robyn (Rob the Rich, if only for the name)

My three least favorite ships for the character

Robyn/any of the other Happy Huntresses, Robyn/Winter (I remember that fucking ‘snowbyrd’ discourse you bastards), Robyn/Qrow (when I remove the spite goggles I don’t like this at all.)

My biggest criticism for the character

you got 10 minutes? 20? Maybe 30? Buckle up fuckos. I got some points to make and you’re gonna listen.

1. Robyn Hill is wasted potential

Robyn’s first appearance was one of my favourite scenes of Vol7. No joke! She was witty, interesting, had an excellent banter with Clover, deliberately stood down from a fight she couldn’t win, though she seemed eager for a challenge, showed some cunning, and looked like she was having fun. 

And then pretty much all of that got ignored. Robyn was set up as a good, smart leader with a cocky swagger, history with Clover, a deceptively cunning streak, and a calm, level-headed attitude. What Robyn was from then on was Angry Shouty Hothead Picks Fights She Can’t Win. She turned into someone impulsive, short-sighted, bullheaded, and focused only on fighting. 70% of Robyn’s lines are about violence and how she likes violence and how she wants to fight with VIOLENCE. The other 30% are, incidentally, ‘i’m so smart and understanding and kind, I’m gonna force people to undergo a lie detector test via peer pressure and ultimatums but it’s actually tragic that no one wants to be my friend because of my semblance. Poor me. 

And that was not what I was expecting. That is not what was foreshadowed. And compared to what the potential could have been, a good allusion rich with depth, a setting that could ahve been interesting if it wasn’t so rushed, how she could have been a player on the board, filled so many possible roles, and instead she was a walking ‘Ironwood bad’ mouthpiece that didn’t actually do anything (and has never done well in a fight, which is RWBY’s staple). What a waste. 

2. Robyn Hill actively makes things worse and gets no comeuppance

Robyn Hill makes situations worse. First of all, she steals supplies from Ironwood (and then doesn’t use them???? what the fuck????), which puts Ironwood under stress, which then leads to Ruby being Miss Unhelpful (but that’s a rant for another day). Robyn then gets classified info from Blake and Yang who, may I remind you, never met her. She could have been a spy! But no, Blake just has a gut feeling (because the script said so).

Robyn then calls James out on this, which later leads to ‘how did Robyn know about the global communications tower’, which means the fighting happens in the office, everyone stresses, Salem provides one of the few redeeming scenes in the show post-Ironwatts fight (it all went downhill from there, even more then it already was). Robyn didn’t explicitly cause this but she sure as fuck had a hand in it. 

Then you have fucking. Clover’s death. Yes, Robyn, agreeing with the serial killer who just tried to murder you and starting a fight in an enclosed space when you’re a ranged fighter vs your melee combatant ex-boyfriend is absolutely the smart thing to do. And then, for a moment, Qrow and Clover nearly sort things out, and fucking Robyn jumps in again. And then, what did she do? She got knocked out immediately. Yikes. Ladies and gentlemen, our ‘Resident Strong Female Character’. But because she did all this, she pretty much guaranteed first: Tyrian escaped. Secondly: Clover died. 

And yeah, Robyn. Just because Qrow didn’t personally shove that blade through Clover’s chest, he still worked with The Serial Killer Who Kills People to help. So yeah, Robyn, that does count as some sort of murder. Or at least, accomplice to murder. You’re also vaguely adjacent to it, so don’t get all ‘but Qrow’s innocent’.

It’s the same problem with team RWBY. They do terrible things, they whine about how hard it is, and all is forgiven cause they’re cute sad girls. There’s no comeuppance. There’s no growth. It’s just the script going ‘this character is right because we said so, so now we’re gonna do our best approximation of if a pretzal and a contortionist had an unholy boneless lovechild and bend the plot so the characters win anyway.’

3. Robyn Hill is a static character

This is gonna sound weird with this lil header but Robyn actually had an arc in vol7! She had an arc that was fairly basic, she went from ‘I don’t trust Ironwood and want to know what’s going on’ to ‘I am actively ruining Ironwood’s goals’ and finally settled on ‘I know what’s going on, Ironwood is worth supporting, and I do trust him.’ It was a simple arc, but it didn’t need to be anything more then that. 

Then in the span of about 1 minute all her actual development was reversed and she ran backwards to her original stance of ‘Ironwood bad’. We literally saw her devleopment walk backwards, and there it stayed. She spent all of vol8 as an empty voicebox that occasionally pipped out ‘Qrow’s my friend’ and was devoid of any personality. She didn’t have much beforehand that wasn’t fairly generic, so it’s almost impressive.

The problem is that static characters take a lot of work to avoid being boring characters. A lot of rwby just has these problems in general, character development is either ignored, skipped over, or given to the wrong characters, but in Robyn’s case it’s actively annoying because she had some development, and then she ignored all of that to go back to being ‘ironwood bad’ with a side of ‘Qrow good’ because we needed to be reminded of that after he got an innocent man killed. 

4. Robyn Hill is an unnecessary character

Why are you here. What do you do. Robyn was stated to be a character meant to act in opposition to Ironwood, to put him under stress like every other fucking character in this series. This was ‘confirmed’ by Eddy Rivas, which means zero because at some point the mentally deranged Weazel Ball that masquerades as the crwby writing team’s collective braincell will rapidly and suddenly change direction, causing massive retcons and plotholes in their moth-eaten threadbare dishtowel they dare to call ‘lore’, and we will have a different excuse for this waste of a good VA. 

Here’s the thing tho: Robyn as ‘opposition for Ironwood’ isn’t fucking special. The fucking air in the Atlas Academy lobby opposes Ironwood. Robyn seems to be there... because Mantle needed a voice? Okay, well, why the fuck did Mantle need to exist? Because... the election plotline needed to exist so Jacque could do something mean? God, everything about Mantle and Robyn and the election plotline is just annoying. It drags and it adds nothing to the plotline and it all should have been culled so instead we could focus on things that are actually important (like maybe: the myth arc? character development? the fucking Schnees in Atlas???) rather then rwby’s fuckboi incel attempt at ‘classism = bad?’. If I, as a professional paid editor who works with actual manuscripts, was given the scripts for rwby vol7, I would have gotten the big red highlighter and done a shitload of crossing out. Then I would have told the writing team “come back with your second draft”, but alas, we got the Atlas Arc.

My favorite thing about the character

I love her design aside from that ugly-ass scarf. Also, her VA, Cristina Vee, is the only redeeming quality of this tire-fire of a character. Godbless and praise. 

A headcanon I have about them

She deals with chronic ‘ponytail keeps falling out’ syndrome, just constantly. So many hairbands get used up when she does anything. 

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

Everything. Every fucking thing. Especially that stupid fucking lie-detecting semblance.

What I I think of their character allusion and what (if anything) I would change about it

It’s incredibly underutilised. It’s Robin Hood in-name-only. It’s like, the most basic ‘oh the name is Robin and they steal’ and there’s not even any of the most obvious tells. Where’s the bright green? Where’s the hood? Where’s the fucking longbow? Where’s the ‘giving to the poor’ that comes after ‘stealing the rich’? She didn’t actually use any of those things she stole to fix Mantle, she just stole it. 

Literally, all the classic elements of Robin Hood are missing, all that’s there is a name and... that’s it. The allusion isn’t there, and even if it was, it’s done in a boring fashion. 

Personally, I would add more Robin Hood elements, and I would change one key thing. I would change her allegiance. Instead of ‘Robin Hood on the side of good’, I would take the team WTCH  approach, a ‘good allusion turned evil’, and I’d have Robyn working with Salem, or, at least, as an antagonist. Because that could be actually interesting then the boring and unnecessary storyline we had. 

[pan0ramy]

re8 thought dump because YE

i feel like this was almost inevitable but idk where else to talk about resident evil village so i’m just going to rant about it here!!! i have,,,, a lot of thoughts on this game after being so excited for it for so long

obviously, massive spoilers if you haven’t finished the game. i feel like i have thoughts on pretty much everything so please please please stay clear of this post if you’re trying to stay blind

otherwise, let me just rant about this game for a bit - mainly the story and characters - because i have Thoughts™

(also i feel like it goes without saying but this will be probably be quite long, so. strap in, ig)

okay SO. the whole intro was pretty interesting - even though we’d seen bits of it in trailers, it was still pretty unnerving and felt like it came out of nowhere. but the first thing that really stood out was the first village section with the hordes of lycans; i didn’t expect this game to start freaking me out so quickly but JESUS my blood pressure went up fast. 

there’s so many of them coming at you at once, and not only have you just lost half your damn hand, you’re not really used to the gunplay at that point AND you don’t have that many weapons at your disposal. so it’s basically just “hey we’re throwing you into this ring of death, good luck surviving!” which... now that i think about it, that really sums up the whole game lol

but for the most part, the early parts of the game are what we saw in the demos, so there’s nothing too new - it was nice getting to see the scene with all four lords and mother miranda, though. i wasn’t sure how the whole chase scene with the lycans would work - i thought heisenberg’s area was going to be some sort of mine, and that the chase would take place there - but it didn’t, and it was interesting regardless of it being so short. 

but the castle. THE CASTLE. 

i would be lying through my teeth if i said i wasn’t excited for dimitrescu like everybody else; i’m firmly in the camp of people who both meme about how attractive she is, and then also the people who legitimately find her attractive, soooo i kinda had high expectations going in? 

and sure, the castle section is only part of the game, but if there’s anything that makes me nervous most, it’s stalker enemies. resi 2 remake was actually pretty tough for me to get through because of how anxiety-inducing mr x was, and even though i don’t feel like she was as present as mr x was, lady d was still great! there were a good few times where you could hear her walking around and you just knew she was searching for you, which was really damn cool.

also, i know capcom had a lot of hype to live up to with lady dimitrescu, but goddamn they did such a great job with her. she’s so imposing but badass and just... really damn cool? like i honestly found myself being excited for her to show up rather than being scared. i just think she’s neat! I MEAN LOOK AT HER.

(also yes i know the whole internet has talked about how attractive she is, but can we just. appreciate that for a second???? she’s gorgeous and yall can’t tell me otherwise. like. bro ik the pronunciation is wrong but the way she says dimitrescu made me GASP i love this powerful vampire woman)

if anything, though, i... actually felt really bad that her story ended up the way it did. i mean, think about it: you break into her house, kill the three people she’s grown to consider her daughters, rob her shit, and then kill her? she technically goes through the same kind of parental grief that ethan does, in a way, which is a really interesting parallel. grief seems to be a theme that capcom really pushed for this game, and it works. 

also, her boss fight design is badass. she’s literally a dragon, how is that not incredible

so the castle was great, where could the game go from here? oh, i don’t know, how about gOOD OLD FASIONED FUCKING TRAUMA.

jesus christ the dollhouse GOT TO ME.

i’m pretty used to horror in general; i love horror games, movies, books, you name it. i’ve gone to horror movies where people have ran out because of fear all while i’ve sat there giggling the whole time. but the dollhouse? that dollhouse is FUCKED. i can’t remember the last time i watched someone play through a horror game and was so... on edge the whole time. the fact that they keep you waiting for so long with nothing happening just... makes the atmosphere incredibly uncomfortable, and then when shit does start going down, it goes down fast. in other words, jesus fucking christ that baby will haunt my nightmares until the end of time

basically capcom managed to make the n*zi baby joke from south park: the stick of truth legitimately terrifying, and i was glad to see donna die. moving on.

moreau’s section is the one i... actually don’t have as many thoughts on. it’s cool, sure, and the whole idea of him turning into a fish when he hits water is neat - it’s definitely a good callback to re4 - but idk, it didn’t really scare me that much. i can see it scaring those with a fear of water or the ocean, for sure, but eh. i thought the designs were cool, but i kinda tuned out a little here.

heisenberg, though, was anything but. the entire time leading up to village’s release, this guy has fascinated me for some reason. i don’t know if it’s because he’s the most normal-looking of the four lords, or the fact that he has telekinesis, or his amazing voice acting (seriously i know some people have shit on his VA but oh my god i adore it) or what, but this guy stood out to me from day one. i even went into the game expecting him not to die tbh. but no, he does, and his fight is pretty damn cool all things considered. only in a resident evil game could you have a mech fight and have it not feel out of place lol

also this line ^^^ legitimately made me laugh so hard i almost choked on my water. THE FACT HE TURNS AROUND AND APOLOGISES SO MEEKLY its fucking hilarious to me

but anyway.

similar to alcina, though, i was left with one big question about heisenberg - what did mother miranda do to him to get him to join her impromptu familly? he said himself to ethan that he didn’t want to join, so what did miranda do that didn’t give him a choice? did he have a family at some point? is he grieving too? what did miranda take from him? i can only hope this gets answered in the dlc, because it’s by far one of my biggest questions surrounding all of this. i may very well have missed it somewhere, and at least we know he has his telekinesis abilities thanks to miranda, but it’s a question that’ll definitely be on my mind going forward.

at this point, though, the story REALLY gets insane. it’s really nice how village decided to just continue on straight from what 7 did, and i’m very glad that everyone’s theories about chris being a werewolf were wrong - it’s a really nice spanner to throw in the works. if anything, the whole revelation of mother miranda disguising herself as mia the whole time since rose’s birth was really cool, and ethan being Mold™ the entire time was pretty neat too - it made a lot of things both in 7 and village make more sense.

what i’m still digesting, though, is the ending.

...man, capcom, you put poor ethan through all of that and then you have the balls to actually kill him? i mean shit, you made us think he was dead for a whole 20 minutes but then nope! he’s alive! but then nope! he’s dead again! i did see someone point out that at least ethan got to go out on his own terms, but dammit i would’ve at least liked for him to get to see mia one last time. i think it would’ve softened the blow a little more. but i guess that ties into the whole grief theming this game has going for it, and like i said, i probably just need some more time to digest it. 

i don’t dislike the ending, it’s just a very big culture shock - it’s definitely a ballsy move, and i really respect capcom for going all out the way they did. they really held back on nothing in terms of this game’s story and i absolutely love it. it was so, so worth the wait in that regard. 

and tbh that’s kinda how i feel about the whole game in general; it was super super good, very much worth the wait, and i absolutely cannot wait to see where resident evil goes from here. i have a gut feeling this’ll end up being one of my absolute favourites in the series, which i know is very high praise, but i really do love it that much. i wasn’t disappointed with much in this game, if anything at all. it’s just a super fucking good video game man idk what else to say at this point

[curestardust]

Dust Watched: Knight's & Magic

Genres: Action, Fantasy, Mecha, School [PG-13] // 13 episodes

This anime committed one of the biggest crimes in anime history. Not the typo in its title but that it was fucking boring.

✧  art  ✧

Let’s start with the good part. The artstyle is gorgeous (i’m all for bright and pastel colours), the animation is fluid, the only less-detailed scenes are faraway shots so those are acceptable. The magic looks cool, the character designs are (more-or-less) unique and the mechs have really good 3D models which don’t distract or seem too out of place for the anime. (BUT the few non-mecha CGI’s looked really weird. Like the horses. Oh god, the horses.) (9/10)

✧  sound ✧

So the VA’s did a splendid job, no complaints there. The music on the other hand is underwhelming. The OP is one of these high-pitched-sounds-like-a-12-year-old-singing pop songs. Same with the ED, they’re both incredibly generic (just like this anime). The OST fits but it’s also just very...boring. Predictable. (6/10)

✧  story  ✧

SO it’s rushed as fuck, constant plot with no filler and it’s STILL BORING. Why? Because of the characters but I will get into that in a second. A disclaimer: I don’t particularly care about mechas and they were not the reason I picked this up but the magic.

I’d assume, the background story is on some LOTR level. There are kingdoms and characters and lore and magic science and mecha science and they tried to put all this in a 13 episodes EXCEPT they didn’t really because everything that happens has to do with mechas. Characters appear and vanish in the blink of an eye, plotlines are resolved in 1-2 episodes and most of the anime is spent in the lab while Ern comes up with some NEWER and CRAZIER update for the mechs to make them STRONGER and BIGGER. The science behind the magic and mechas sounds interesting at first but after sitting there for nearly 10 minutes listening to characters talk about how mechs work every second episode feels like you’re stuck in a spectacularly boring physics lesson. (5/10)

✧  characters  ✧

Oh god. Where to even start. First of all the background and the side characters are one of the most boring set of people I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching interact. The knights have basically no chemistry and while they had potential to be interesting, they don’t have enough screentime for that. The dwarves don’t do anything just build mechs and act exasperated. I can’t remember any of the background characters’ names cause they either 1. don’t have screentime 2. have no personalities  3. literally appear for 5 minutes.

And then there are the twins. You look at these 2 next to Ernestie’s design and just scratch your head. These are supposed to be the main-side characters? Their designs are flat and boring with washed out colours, just like their personalities. The girl just squeels ERU-KUN!!! in a high pitched voice and hugs Ernesti once per episode. The boy doesn’t do anything or has any personality and then is shoved into a boring romance plotline with an also boring character who just appeared like 2 episodes ago...what???

And Ernesti. The gary stu. The OP character. The self-insert for the mecha otakus. Listen I can relate to him. I can relate to having immense passion for something and working your ass off to achieve it. But HE is the thing that makes this anime boring. Because there is literally nothing that can stop him. <minor spoiler> Literally in the 2nd or 3rd episode he defeats one of the biggest and strongest monsters known to mankind? Like what the fuck, chill and slow down a little, you can barely walk, you’re just a baby.</minor spoiler> 

There’s nothing to root for! To get excited about! Because you already know that Ernesti will smirk and bash whatever it is into the ground and walk away unscathed. So not only was the talking portion of the anime boring, the battle portion was as well! Sure it was flashy and looked good but as soon as you try to look further than that it all falls apart. (3/10)

✧  OVERALL ✧

And what makes me the most mad? The final episode was AMAZING! There was finally a formidable foe to challenge Ernesti which allowed him to express more than 2 emotions. And because of that the finale and the battle was actually fun! And this is why it makes me mad. The potential was there but it was completely wasted. Maybe this is a good eye candy anime for the mecha fans but if you’re here for the story or the characters, don’t touch this one.

My Rating: 4.4/10