Pokemon, Madoka Magica 09
» POKEMON NERDERY TIME. This is my team so far:
Janovy, lv17
Shimama, lv11
Hiyappu, lv13
Choroneko, lv8
Mamepato, lv9
Tabunne, lv 11
(I swear I'm not being as much of a weeaboo as that makes me look--it's just that I'm playing the j-version of the game, so that's what I come to know them as.)
P.S. Three guesses as to what I named the Choroneko, because I am a terrible person. (If they keep making purple cats in these games, I'm going to keep naming them the same!)
I'm not quite three hours in now and I can definitely feel myself getting sucked in. It was a bit of a slow go at first because, GOOD GOD, IF I HAD TO SEE ANOTHER MINEMIZU WITHOUT SOME FUCKING VARIETY, I WAS GOING TO PUNCH SOMETHING. Just as I was starting to really complain about that, I got past the daycare (jeez, that came up awfully early, for what I was expecting) I was dicking around in the grass and, WHOOSH, SHIMAMA, FUCK YES, ELETRIC ZEBRA HORSE TYPE THING, YOU ARE MINE. It took me for-fucking-ever (well, it just seemed that way) to get it up to lv11 to get it an actual electric type move (instead of just Charge, which is ridiculous to have WHEN IT DOESN'T YET HAVE AN ELECTRIC ATTACK MOVE) but now that I have it, ZEBRA PONY IS MY FAAAVORITE.
No, I lie, Janovy is still my favorite, but I know me. I fucking love my electric types. (Grass is a close second, but electricity! It zaps everything! I LOVE IT OKAY.)
I don't yet have a fire type, but I haven't really had the opportunity to get one yet and I find that I'm strangely unhurried. I usually love fire types! But, idk, as cute as Pokabu was, the little smug grass type! My faaaaaavorite! Also, I really want a Victini. :< Stupid Japanese versions not having it. :<
Anyway, I figure I'll ditch Hiyappu as soon as a better water type comes along, I was going to ditch Mamepato until a better flying type came along but then I saw it's second evolution was kind of ridiculously badass, so I may keep it for awhile afterall. I love my Choroneko, but I almost never use Dark types and I'm not super hyped over it's evolution form. Tabunne is just there because, fuck, if I have to look at more fucking Yorterris (the little yappy dog type), I'm going to punch something again.
The plot is going about as these things go. I'm curious, but not expecting Shakespeare. I'm still shipping N/Touko, months and months of gorgeous fanart made sure of that, but man. I wouldn't say no to Cheren/Touko--their dual battle was pretty damn badass. I also ♥ Bel a lot, she is SO ADORABLE OMG, every word out of her makes me just want to scoop her up in a hug. Cheren is kind of winning me over a lot, with his "I have dignity in a Pokemon game" attitude.
I am so totally not ready for the second gym yet, which means more grinding time (but that'll get easier with more variety now), but I'm semi-okay with that because my Shimama has an electric attack now~~. ♥♥♥
Also, I kind of love Plasma and how totally over the top they are and WE WILL FREE POKEMON FROM BEING ENSLAVED BY HUMANITY... BY MAKING OURS BATTLE YOURS!!! Awesome plan there, Plasma. Also, their outfits, lololol. I love how OVER THE TOP EVIL they make them by kicking the poor Pokemon that they wanted to cough up the Dream Smoke, because, yeah, that totally made sense with your goals, guys.
» My other end-of-the-week show is Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica 09, which also includes major SPOILERS. I haven't gone around to the usual discussion places yet, so these are mostly unfiltered thoughts (with only a bit of flailing on im), so I make no promises of coherency.
(I watched it as soon as it came out, but it took me until now to sit down and just write my reaction post. Ugh, why can't lj posts just come out of your head fully formed already?)
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica 09:
I think this episode is the first time that I feel the show made a big misstep. While I'm glad they gave a concrete reveal for Kyuubei (well, as concrete as you could get without actually going into his race's background, but I'm glad they didn't, it would have taken away from events that needed the focus more and it would have thrown off the pacing), I pretty much had one reaction: "....lol aliens."
Really, show? Aliens?
I would have preferred them to go the magical route, that they were the overseers of the magic in the world, something like that. It would have made more sense--you've already got magical girls and special contracts and souls being pulled out of bodies and powers and soul gems and grief seeds and magical dimensions. You don't need to throw aliens into that mix as well. (Unless they meant, like, not necessarily from another planet, just alien to normal human life? That might have been more interesting. Eh, whatever. I can't remember the exact phrasing they used, but I imagine it's not going to be a major point either way.)
It did however give the show a chance for one of the creepiest lines yet, after Kyuubei revealing how a magical girl turning into a witch (and thereby dying) gave them a lot of energy and Madoka had a huge amount of potential energy: "If you ever feel like dying for the universe, call us."
*brr*
(However, I sort of wanted to call bullshit on Kyuubei's explanation of how much energy was lost so they had to create more, because energy is never lost, it's just converted into different forms. Law of Conservation of Energy!!, I kind of wanted to shout at the show, but I get that it's a magical girl anime, so I just sat down and was quiet. Or maybe it was just the translation, idk.)
Everything else, I thought was really well-done. Of course Kyouko was going to die, we could pretty much guarantee that because she wasn't in Madoka's dreams. But also Homura has a maroon gem on her shield, which makes me think that it's her timeline's Kyouko's gem, which means that Kyouko basically had to be dead there. (Or at least her body destroyed.) But the build-up to her death was masterful--not just the gay with Sayaka (goodness, if I didn't ship Kyouko/Sayaka before this, I certainly would now) and Sayaka's witch form (the knight motif, the music, the shadowed form with the violin), it was all as intense a follow up as the previous episode demanded.
I don't think much could really top episode 8 (nor do I think this episode really succeeded at it, but it would have been pretty impossible to do better than that), but one thing I really loved was Kyouko's decision to die here. Ever since the reveal of what their soul gems were (and that their bodies are basically zombies now), there's been an unsettling air about what being a magical girl means. In the previous episode, they learned that there's only one fate for a magical girl ever--eventually, your soul becomes so dirtied that you die and become a witch. You become that horrible thing you're always fighting against. They didn't have to say it, but you know Kyouko wasn't going out like that. Instead, she went out on her own goddamned terms and she went out as a hardcore hero. I loved that.
Kyuubei's response to Homura at the end made it even creepier, too. He knew that going in there was probably going to result in Kyouko's death, but it wasn't a sacrifice made in vein. Because now Walpurgisnacht was still coming and Homura couldn't handle it by herself. Which meant Madoka had to become a magical girl to help her. :3
(One does wonder if Madoka's dream is going to play out just like that, because Madoka didn't look terribly afraid of Kyuubei or horrified by or angry of him in her dream--will that change? Was she seeing the future? Or was she maybe seeing Homura's timeline?)
One of the other most heartbreaking things--and one of the ways the show defied the usual tropes of the genre yet again--is that Kyouko and Madoka's pleading didn't reach Sayaka. There was no response, she never heard them, not even for a moment. She didn't have a brief return to herself before she died, there was just nothing. It's heartbreaking when you think about how much they risked to try to reach out to her, but that it failed completely.
It often makes me think about where all this is going, about how the defiance of the usual tropes will or won't have an effect on the ultimate direction of the show. Is it going to be a happy ending? Would a happy ending feel like too much of a cop-out? Can they really keep up this intensity through the whole series? What do I even want out of the ending? Do I want it to end with, say, rocks falling, everyone dying, and Homura being sent to yet another timeline and, WHAM, THE END? Because I think that might be a genius trolling of the audience by Urobuchi.
Which made me think on the nature of time loop series, like with Higurashi--why bother telling a story about a time loop if it's not the ending? There's no point to it, not when you know there's eventually going to be an ending, why bother with anything else?
And then a new thought popped into my head: "Unless the point is that it CAN'T be prevented."
Because that would be a serious mindfuck. No matter how hard Homura tries, no matter how many times she goes back, she CAN'T fix it, it's not possible. These people are simply just doomed, no matter what she says or does. It would go against everything we've been primed to expect from time travel stories.
(And that's when I realized, motherfucker, I think I just talked myself into wanting that ending more than anything, despite that I was so careful not to give myself expectations! To be honest, though, I don't think the ending will be that much of a downer, I expect something more bittersweet. Also, I'm convinced that her shield and those gems are going to mean something important, like how grief seeds can be turned back into soul gems, which means it would have to have a happy-ish ending.)
Stray observations:
→ I like the explanation of how young girls have this intense energy, so they're really good targets. It makes sense in a lot of ways--they're old enough to have all these strong emotions that create this intense energy, but they're young enough that they don't have the experience to be wary. As Wolfie said, can you imagine, say, Madoka's mom making a contract? No way is she falling for that bullshit.
It's interesting the way it subverts things here, too--the emotions of the young girls in magical girl series are always important, especially when reaching out or powering the girl, they're used to help her reach heights she couldn't before. But with this show, it's more that it makes them a more potent source of energy and that's kind of it. No matter how strongly Kyouko and Madoka (Madoka! who has this incredible potential!) desperately wished to reach out to Sayaka after she fell, they couldn't do it.
→ Madoka asking if she was a coward for not becoming a magical girl and Kyouko's response! ♥ Only those who have no other choice should make a contract. Anyone who did it for no reason, she would beat them up!
→ Kyouko offering Madoka food! I love how understated that moment is, how it only lasts a few seconds, but it says everything about how Kyouko relates to people and the understanding she shares with Madoka.
→ Another interesting thought I had--none of the girls have magical codenames. I was going through Heartcatch Precure art and labelling art as Precure Blossom or Precure Marine or Precure Sunshine and it occurred to me, huh, despite that the show draws inspiration from team-based magical girl anime (which very often have codenames for their characters), there aren't any special names here. They just keep their regular names.
→ There was another close-up of Homura's shield as she used her time powers, showing the energy running through it and I'm convinced it means something. Or else Urobuchi is better at red herrings/trolling than I've given him credit for.
Janovy, lv17
Shimama, lv11
Hiyappu, lv13
Choroneko, lv8
Mamepato, lv9
Tabunne, lv 11
(I swear I'm not being as much of a weeaboo as that makes me look--it's just that I'm playing the j-version of the game, so that's what I come to know them as.)
P.S. Three guesses as to what I named the Choroneko, because I am a terrible person. (If they keep making purple cats in these games, I'm going to keep naming them the same!)
I'm not quite three hours in now and I can definitely feel myself getting sucked in. It was a bit of a slow go at first because, GOOD GOD, IF I HAD TO SEE ANOTHER MINEMIZU WITHOUT SOME FUCKING VARIETY, I WAS GOING TO PUNCH SOMETHING. Just as I was starting to really complain about that, I got past the daycare (jeez, that came up awfully early, for what I was expecting) I was dicking around in the grass and, WHOOSH, SHIMAMA, FUCK YES, ELETRIC ZEBRA HORSE TYPE THING, YOU ARE MINE. It took me for-fucking-ever (well, it just seemed that way) to get it up to lv11 to get it an actual electric type move (instead of just Charge, which is ridiculous to have WHEN IT DOESN'T YET HAVE AN ELECTRIC ATTACK MOVE) but now that I have it, ZEBRA PONY IS MY FAAAVORITE.
No, I lie, Janovy is still my favorite, but I know me. I fucking love my electric types. (Grass is a close second, but electricity! It zaps everything! I LOVE IT OKAY.)
I don't yet have a fire type, but I haven't really had the opportunity to get one yet and I find that I'm strangely unhurried. I usually love fire types! But, idk, as cute as Pokabu was, the little smug grass type! My faaaaaavorite! Also, I really want a Victini. :< Stupid Japanese versions not having it. :<
Anyway, I figure I'll ditch Hiyappu as soon as a better water type comes along, I was going to ditch Mamepato until a better flying type came along but then I saw it's second evolution was kind of ridiculously badass, so I may keep it for awhile afterall. I love my Choroneko, but I almost never use Dark types and I'm not super hyped over it's evolution form. Tabunne is just there because, fuck, if I have to look at more fucking Yorterris (the little yappy dog type), I'm going to punch something again.
The plot is going about as these things go. I'm curious, but not expecting Shakespeare. I'm still shipping N/Touko, months and months of gorgeous fanart made sure of that, but man. I wouldn't say no to Cheren/Touko--their dual battle was pretty damn badass. I also ♥ Bel a lot, she is SO ADORABLE OMG, every word out of her makes me just want to scoop her up in a hug. Cheren is kind of winning me over a lot, with his "I have dignity in a Pokemon game" attitude.
I am so totally not ready for the second gym yet, which means more grinding time (but that'll get easier with more variety now), but I'm semi-okay with that because my Shimama has an electric attack now~~. ♥♥♥
Also, I kind of love Plasma and how totally over the top they are and WE WILL FREE POKEMON FROM BEING ENSLAVED BY HUMANITY... BY MAKING OURS BATTLE YOURS!!! Awesome plan there, Plasma. Also, their outfits, lololol. I love how OVER THE TOP EVIL they make them by kicking the poor Pokemon that they wanted to cough up the Dream Smoke, because, yeah, that totally made sense with your goals, guys.
» My other end-of-the-week show is Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica 09, which also includes major SPOILERS. I haven't gone around to the usual discussion places yet, so these are mostly unfiltered thoughts (with only a bit of flailing on im), so I make no promises of coherency.
(I watched it as soon as it came out, but it took me until now to sit down and just write my reaction post. Ugh, why can't lj posts just come out of your head fully formed already?)
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica 09:
I think this episode is the first time that I feel the show made a big misstep. While I'm glad they gave a concrete reveal for Kyuubei (well, as concrete as you could get without actually going into his race's background, but I'm glad they didn't, it would have taken away from events that needed the focus more and it would have thrown off the pacing), I pretty much had one reaction: "....lol aliens."
Really, show? Aliens?
I would have preferred them to go the magical route, that they were the overseers of the magic in the world, something like that. It would have made more sense--you've already got magical girls and special contracts and souls being pulled out of bodies and powers and soul gems and grief seeds and magical dimensions. You don't need to throw aliens into that mix as well. (Unless they meant, like, not necessarily from another planet, just alien to normal human life? That might have been more interesting. Eh, whatever. I can't remember the exact phrasing they used, but I imagine it's not going to be a major point either way.)
It did however give the show a chance for one of the creepiest lines yet, after Kyuubei revealing how a magical girl turning into a witch (and thereby dying) gave them a lot of energy and Madoka had a huge amount of potential energy: "If you ever feel like dying for the universe, call us."
*brr*
(However, I sort of wanted to call bullshit on Kyuubei's explanation of how much energy was lost so they had to create more, because energy is never lost, it's just converted into different forms. Law of Conservation of Energy!!, I kind of wanted to shout at the show, but I get that it's a magical girl anime, so I just sat down and was quiet. Or maybe it was just the translation, idk.)
Everything else, I thought was really well-done. Of course Kyouko was going to die, we could pretty much guarantee that because she wasn't in Madoka's dreams. But also Homura has a maroon gem on her shield, which makes me think that it's her timeline's Kyouko's gem, which means that Kyouko basically had to be dead there. (Or at least her body destroyed.) But the build-up to her death was masterful--not just the gay with Sayaka (goodness, if I didn't ship Kyouko/Sayaka before this, I certainly would now) and Sayaka's witch form (the knight motif, the music, the shadowed form with the violin), it was all as intense a follow up as the previous episode demanded.
I don't think much could really top episode 8 (nor do I think this episode really succeeded at it, but it would have been pretty impossible to do better than that), but one thing I really loved was Kyouko's decision to die here. Ever since the reveal of what their soul gems were (and that their bodies are basically zombies now), there's been an unsettling air about what being a magical girl means. In the previous episode, they learned that there's only one fate for a magical girl ever--eventually, your soul becomes so dirtied that you die and become a witch. You become that horrible thing you're always fighting against. They didn't have to say it, but you know Kyouko wasn't going out like that. Instead, she went out on her own goddamned terms and she went out as a hardcore hero. I loved that.
Kyuubei's response to Homura at the end made it even creepier, too. He knew that going in there was probably going to result in Kyouko's death, but it wasn't a sacrifice made in vein. Because now Walpurgisnacht was still coming and Homura couldn't handle it by herself. Which meant Madoka had to become a magical girl to help her. :3
(One does wonder if Madoka's dream is going to play out just like that, because Madoka didn't look terribly afraid of Kyuubei or horrified by or angry of him in her dream--will that change? Was she seeing the future? Or was she maybe seeing Homura's timeline?)
One of the other most heartbreaking things--and one of the ways the show defied the usual tropes of the genre yet again--is that Kyouko and Madoka's pleading didn't reach Sayaka. There was no response, she never heard them, not even for a moment. She didn't have a brief return to herself before she died, there was just nothing. It's heartbreaking when you think about how much they risked to try to reach out to her, but that it failed completely.
It often makes me think about where all this is going, about how the defiance of the usual tropes will or won't have an effect on the ultimate direction of the show. Is it going to be a happy ending? Would a happy ending feel like too much of a cop-out? Can they really keep up this intensity through the whole series? What do I even want out of the ending? Do I want it to end with, say, rocks falling, everyone dying, and Homura being sent to yet another timeline and, WHAM, THE END? Because I think that might be a genius trolling of the audience by Urobuchi.
Which made me think on the nature of time loop series, like with Higurashi--why bother telling a story about a time loop if it's not the ending? There's no point to it, not when you know there's eventually going to be an ending, why bother with anything else?
And then a new thought popped into my head: "Unless the point is that it CAN'T be prevented."
Because that would be a serious mindfuck. No matter how hard Homura tries, no matter how many times she goes back, she CAN'T fix it, it's not possible. These people are simply just doomed, no matter what she says or does. It would go against everything we've been primed to expect from time travel stories.
(And that's when I realized, motherfucker, I think I just talked myself into wanting that ending more than anything, despite that I was so careful not to give myself expectations! To be honest, though, I don't think the ending will be that much of a downer, I expect something more bittersweet. Also, I'm convinced that her shield and those gems are going to mean something important, like how grief seeds can be turned back into soul gems, which means it would have to have a happy-ish ending.)
Stray observations:
→ I like the explanation of how young girls have this intense energy, so they're really good targets. It makes sense in a lot of ways--they're old enough to have all these strong emotions that create this intense energy, but they're young enough that they don't have the experience to be wary. As Wolfie said, can you imagine, say, Madoka's mom making a contract? No way is she falling for that bullshit.
It's interesting the way it subverts things here, too--the emotions of the young girls in magical girl series are always important, especially when reaching out or powering the girl, they're used to help her reach heights she couldn't before. But with this show, it's more that it makes them a more potent source of energy and that's kind of it. No matter how strongly Kyouko and Madoka (Madoka! who has this incredible potential!) desperately wished to reach out to Sayaka after she fell, they couldn't do it.
→ Madoka asking if she was a coward for not becoming a magical girl and Kyouko's response! ♥ Only those who have no other choice should make a contract. Anyone who did it for no reason, she would beat them up!
→ Kyouko offering Madoka food! I love how understated that moment is, how it only lasts a few seconds, but it says everything about how Kyouko relates to people and the understanding she shares with Madoka.
→ Another interesting thought I had--none of the girls have magical codenames. I was going through Heartcatch Precure art and labelling art as Precure Blossom or Precure Marine or Precure Sunshine and it occurred to me, huh, despite that the show draws inspiration from team-based magical girl anime (which very often have codenames for their characters), there aren't any special names here. They just keep their regular names.
→ There was another close-up of Homura's shield as she used her time powers, showing the energy running through it and I'm convinced it means something. Or else Urobuchi is better at red herrings/trolling than I've given him credit for.