I apologize to the internet.
So... I have... feelings concerning No. 6.^_^; Which I have watched the anime for, and read the novel translations as far as they currently go, and the summaries after that, and may try the manga sometime later, and will be eyeing the Japanese novels of when I am in SF for Yaoi-con, though if that isn't proof enough let me be clear about this now: When I like something I nitpick at it mercilessly till all the things I like about it get drowned out in a sea of bombastic moping. If that sounds like fun to you, please click the cut. But I like it. Really. I swear. ^^
(Also note that the anime/novels/summaries are hopelessly jumbled in my head. I cannot address them separately, but I feel like the issues extend to all of it anyway, though maybe certain ones to lesser and greater degrees.)
Ok, so just to get this part out of the way because it's not really what I want to rant about: I figure the non-character-centered parts of the No. 6 plot are problematic no matter how you slice it. No. 6 (or more specifically the people controlling it) is evil and dystopian (despite being an exceedingly young city around nowhere near long enough to have semi-brainwashed its people as supposedly well as it has), and something should be done about that, and also parasitic wasps are starting to kill off people in the city so maybe we should let someone know and do something about that too, only we aren't in agreement about what if anything should be done on either account, but that's ok because it's not like we have any power or knowledge that would allow us to do anything even if we tried, which we kind of sometimes do sometimes, but nothing happens. And oh look the series is coming to a close how bout let's say magical forest people were behind it all also your friend is kidnapped go save her so you have an excuse to be in the thick of things in the end and maybe blow some stuff up and get shot at or something.
But I'll be honest: I'm pathetic. A mix of scifi/dystopian/action/drama might be a dime a dozen in novels, but it's hard enough to come by in anime form that I'll be pleased even with lackluster handling, so long as I can like the characters. And speaking of, even in novels you'll be hard pressed to find scifi/dystopian/action/drama that's so completely character driven and a total bromance/verging on BL.
How could I *not* like this? The very idea is preposterous.
And that's not even to speak of the glorious things they try to do with the characters/bromance. Two boys, not easily affected--either hardened or growing apathetic--who affect one another deeply and change the way the other sees the world and other human beings. Particularly Nezumi, always trying to be on guard yet so constantly disarmed by the other's simultaneous naivete and intelligence and matter-of-fact honesty. Charmed even. Yet while so taken with one another, finding so many barriers between mutual understanding. Shion having to deal with being cared for as the person he is in one moment, but in so many others being treated like some embodiment of the city Nezumi hates. Nezumi struggling with being unable to let go of Shion while having a strong sense that continued association opens him up to various dangers (letting his guard down, or his fear of the increasingly volatile nature of Shion's emotions--this being one of the things I think I do remember being a little more prevalent in the novels?) The struggle for two very different people to see eye to eye. The huge amount of intimacy between them despite it all. The effing canon dancing and ambiguously-platonic-or-romantic kiss scenes. The fact that the potential for romance is only one of the shiny things going on here. That the author of the novels is even quoted as saying she refuses to flat out say what Shion and Nezumi are--friends or lovers or soul mates or what--because she doesn't think we should trick ourselves into thinking the relationships between people can be summed up in single words so easily and was trying to show that--which sounds like a prettily worded cop-out except that I got that sense from them before even reading the author's words and the fact that it was intentional makes me squee with fangirlish glee.
A lot of the things about the wider plot of No. 6 might be weak, but while a stronger overall plot might be nicer to have, it is largely just a container for the real story of Shion and Nezumi navigating through their notions and emotions concerning one another, so maybe let's not be too hard on the brittle candy coating of our delicious gooey center, right?
...Only you might notice my careful sentence wording of a couple paragraphs ago as I say these delicious gooies are what the creator(s) try to do.
Because I can't help but feeling like in addition to not moving their overall plot forward through the entire 85% of the center of the series, the ebb and flow of how they related to one another didn't seem to be telling a cohesive story either. On top of that, so many of the glimmers of things I saw that I liked or found intriguing about the relationship--whether things I saw when they initially met as children or things I saw being suggested through the series, were dropped, fumbled, or not used to their full effect.
First there's Shion. In these sorts of stories--those stories where a romantic, dangerous character sweeps into the life of someone living a "normal" existence--the normal character's interest in the romantic character I find understandable, but frequently the romantic character's supposed attachment to the normal character unconvincing. (I know. It's wish fulfillment for all us normal people. I still grumble. XD)
But actually here, I get it. If Shion had just been a naive bleeding heart, I could be wrong, but I'd bet that Nezumi would have been grateful to him but inwardly just rolled his eyes at the comfy lives of No. 6 citizens and eventually mostly forgotten about him. But Shion was an odd kid. He was an excited little boy with a needle, but also extremely intelligent. He was completely sheltered, but unfailingly calm and capable in a completely foreign situation. Naive, but curious.
Still, he's a kid from No. 6, and Nezumi is undoubtedly the more worldly, and attempts to put on a superior manner with him, yet every other thing that comes out of the boy's mouth is such a surprise he scarcely knows what to think of him--can't compartmentalize him like he was likely so sure he could. (Also, Shion supposedly senses that something in No. 6 isn't right and feels suffocated and Nezumi notices this, right? Though I don't think that a bit of window yelling and weird daydreams got that across as well as they meant it to.) Despite himself, Nezumi ends up talking and laughing with him like an equal.
Fast forward, and Nezumi is rescuing Shion from No. 6. He's back to acting superior, being condescending and bossing Shion around, but hey, Shion is the clueless one that doesn't know wtf is going on, so maybe a little of it's called for. Anywya, Nezumi's also bragging about being taller, a sign he's trying maybe a little too hard to emphasize his superiority, a potential sign someone isn't so sure of their superiority after all....right? ^_^;
Fast forward to when they're living together...and it looks like the bragging may have been a false beacon. Nezumi still treats Shion the same damn way. He belittles him, ignores his questions, mocks his concerns and emotions. What's more, Shion seems to have changed his attitude a bit, too (though it's hard to say whether it was Nezumi's treatment of him that made Shion behave differently or Shion's behavior that allowed Nezumi's attitude to trample him so much more than before).
Younger Shion was quirkily curious, frank, and fairly assured. Older Shion is...full of flustered helplessness. I swear half the time he and Nezumi fight, he's half a step away from stamping his foot prettily. He's still got the quirky honesty, but now these sorts of comments of his tend almost entirely (I do think maybe the novel had a little more variety to it but still...) to sweet little emotional confessions (which are cute, but when that's all there is he comes off as big-hearted-unguarded-fool rather than quirky-frankness-that-can-sometimes-be-touching that I thought it was going for before).
Shion's attitude can make sense. He's been very suddenly flung from the world he knows to a much grittier one. It makes sense for him to lose some confidence, but... having a strange kid show up with a gunshot wound in your window is a pretty gritty reality, too, yet he dealt with that fine. So it would also have made sense for him to deal with this new turn of events while still retaining more of his self-assurance, and I think that would have made for a more interesting dynamic between he and Nezumi.
Instead, Nezumi doesn't respect Shion. It's one of the conflicts of the story--Shion, thank god, punches him for it later--and it's a fine conflict, but seeing Shion get smeared into the ground and then get back up smiling pleasantly isn't really satisfying. What happened to the Nezumi that seemed so charmed by Shion's oddness that he had difficulty looking down on him as he clearly meant to? I had figured through the story that "difficulty looking down on him" and "charmed" feelings would grow to actual respect for the way Shion thinks and sees the world, yet by the end--even after the fight when Nezumi agrees to treat him more equally--he's still hiding things from Shion, protecting his naive sensibilities from the world rather than understanding Shion can take it.
Nezumi sometimes asks himself why he's keeping with Shion when it clearly holds so many dangers, and while my fangirl heart wants them to stay together--and sees reasons Nezumi COULD have for staying if they were developed more--when I look at Shion the way he seems to see him (not someone as he respects but something like a helpless thing he irritatedly protects, almost like a pet) his motivation for staying with him seems a little mystifying to me as well.
At the same time, Nezumi's frequent insistence that Shion didn't matter to him as much as he clearly did--or that their relationship would eventually go sour--got on my nerves as well. Especially when he could go from saying or thinking such things in one scene to saying and doing things so completely opposite in the next. Lack of self awareness can attribute for some of that, it's a frequent and not at all bad relationship plot device, but it was for me far beyond the level of believability.
(And if there needed to be another barrier toward them being happy together, why not further develop Nezumi's supposed "fear" of Shion? It was spoken of a bit more in the novel, but from what I saw it still seemed random and little used there. It makes a lot of sense--Shion grew up in No. 6 feeling repressed. He gets out and talks about how he's feeling so many more emotions now, but what if in addition to repressing good emotions there was something in Shion "monstrous" worth fearing? And the longer he's out and with Nezumi, the more that part of him comes out too? ...That to me makes a heck of a lot more of a compelling reason for Nezumi to feel trepidation about getting closer to Shion than "we're going to be enemies someday cause you want to save the innocent citizens of No. 6 and I don't" or usual in-denial-about-how-much-he-cares song and dance. Plus, hey, it would also make Nezumi's protective behavior be less condescending! Instead of trying to keep the dirty world from sullying pure little Shion, he could be trying to keep the Pandora's-box-of-a-Shion from cracking open even further than it's already started. XD And--if Nezumi thinks himself part of the reason for Shion going a little nutsy--makes his reason for disappearing off into the sunset a little more understandable. ...Though I think fear of intimacy/sudden lack of purpose in life could also be attributed, though whatever it was, THE AUTHOR REALLY SHOULD HAVE SUGGESTED MORE CLEARLY AND DROPPED MORE HINTS AT SUCH ISSUES IN NEZUMI BEFORE THE END AS WELL.)
Still, all this stuff I've been ranting about for the past fiftybajillion paragraphs could mostly all be attributed to personal taste. XD; The Nezumi/Shion dynamic turned out a little more clearly seme/uke-ish than I expected, a dynamic I just don't much like. The real groan-worthy part of it for me was the lack of cohesive story being told even in the character relationship side of the plot. Even if the relationship veered in a direction I was less interested in, it's still got all these potentially interesting elements to their relationship...but instead of making a story that builds on itself, it just sort of juggles them wildly, and while Nezumi and Shion's interactions could still be a delight for me to see, especially for the glimmers of the things I did like so much about them...NOTHING. FREAKING. HAPPENS. (...most of the time. the fight scene was, like, the best thing ever. ...and that's not just my affinity for seeing boys I ship punch each other in pent up emotional rage XD) Nezumi makes overjoyed speeches about how No. 6 is going down to wasps and makes Shion sad. Shion talks about wanting to know the "truth" whatever the crap he means by that. Shion talks about how to save No. 6 from wasps. Nezumi doesn’t want to. Nezumi talks about how they shouldn't get close. Shion asks why he hates No. 6. Shion makes embarrassing heartfelt declarations. Wash, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat.
And the thing is, while I don't mind No. 6 letting plot fall by the wayside in order to focus more on character development in theory, I think (as I've noticed with various really character development centered but low on plot stories that didn't quite work how I think the author wanted) more plot would actually have helped the character development. Plot forces characters into new situations that mix up the relationship.
In this particular case, the wasp plot gave me a lot of hope initially (before I realized it was going basically nowhere) because it is something Shion had more information on than anyone else. Nezumi was strong and street smart and superior in pretty much all the ways that mattered to one's way of life when you don't live in No. 6 anymore. But what if the wasp plot had been shaped a little different, and for one reason or another Nezumi had actually had some sort of stake in it? Shion had seen someone die from it, had nearly died himself, HAD STUDIED ECOLOGY (!!!could actually use his knowledge/greatest strength!!!), and had already used his knowledge a little to guess that the wasps wouldn't be active till spring (psh, though then they went and made that a useless observation *more groaning*). Shion would have been the expert in something that mattered, and it's not hard to imagine that it could have changed some of their interactions significantly. I confess at first I found the idea of parasitic wasps a bit wtf, and in the end if anything it got even more wtf (and oh boy did it), but it actually might have been a really well-chosen device if used differently.
In the end, No. 6 feels a lot to me like what I imagine what the NaNoWriMo novel of a very good author might be like. All these little inspired ideas...that sometimes well-written-ly-but-aimlessly run around each other for the length of a story till it's time to be over and WTF I'VE GOT ONE NIGHT LEFT TO FINISH THIS NOVEL LET'S THROW IN SOME FLOATING BRAIN AND GIANT RAINBOW WASP ACTION.
Getting to experience NaNo No. 6 was a lot better than not getting any No. 6 at all, and I looked forward to every episode. I just wish I'd gotten to see the final draft, and a look at the story I felt like the author might have meant to write. :(
Ok. Now. Convince me I am wrong and just didn't watch/read it right, and that it is wonderful. I want to be convinced it is wonderful. T___T;
...Of course, there is always fandom. Fandom will heal my soul. *goes to attack her list of fic to read* (Actually it already did heal my soul. Because BEST NO. 6 FIC EVAH. READ.)
(Also note that the anime/novels/summaries are hopelessly jumbled in my head. I cannot address them separately, but I feel like the issues extend to all of it anyway, though maybe certain ones to lesser and greater degrees.)
Ok, so just to get this part out of the way because it's not really what I want to rant about: I figure the non-character-centered parts of the No. 6 plot are problematic no matter how you slice it. No. 6 (or more specifically the people controlling it) is evil and dystopian (despite being an exceedingly young city around nowhere near long enough to have semi-brainwashed its people as supposedly well as it has), and something should be done about that, and also parasitic wasps are starting to kill off people in the city so maybe we should let someone know and do something about that too, only we aren't in agreement about what if anything should be done on either account, but that's ok because it's not like we have any power or knowledge that would allow us to do anything even if we tried, which we kind of sometimes do sometimes, but nothing happens. And oh look the series is coming to a close how bout let's say magical forest people were behind it all also your friend is kidnapped go save her so you have an excuse to be in the thick of things in the end and maybe blow some stuff up and get shot at or something.
But I'll be honest: I'm pathetic. A mix of scifi/dystopian/action/drama might be a dime a dozen in novels, but it's hard enough to come by in anime form that I'll be pleased even with lackluster handling, so long as I can like the characters. And speaking of, even in novels you'll be hard pressed to find scifi/dystopian/action/drama that's so completely character driven and a total bromance/verging on BL.
How could I *not* like this? The very idea is preposterous.
And that's not even to speak of the glorious things they try to do with the characters/bromance. Two boys, not easily affected--either hardened or growing apathetic--who affect one another deeply and change the way the other sees the world and other human beings. Particularly Nezumi, always trying to be on guard yet so constantly disarmed by the other's simultaneous naivete and intelligence and matter-of-fact honesty. Charmed even. Yet while so taken with one another, finding so many barriers between mutual understanding. Shion having to deal with being cared for as the person he is in one moment, but in so many others being treated like some embodiment of the city Nezumi hates. Nezumi struggling with being unable to let go of Shion while having a strong sense that continued association opens him up to various dangers (letting his guard down, or his fear of the increasingly volatile nature of Shion's emotions--this being one of the things I think I do remember being a little more prevalent in the novels?) The struggle for two very different people to see eye to eye. The huge amount of intimacy between them despite it all. The effing canon dancing and ambiguously-platonic-or-romantic kiss scenes. The fact that the potential for romance is only one of the shiny things going on here. That the author of the novels is even quoted as saying she refuses to flat out say what Shion and Nezumi are--friends or lovers or soul mates or what--because she doesn't think we should trick ourselves into thinking the relationships between people can be summed up in single words so easily and was trying to show that--which sounds like a prettily worded cop-out except that I got that sense from them before even reading the author's words and the fact that it was intentional makes me squee with fangirlish glee.
A lot of the things about the wider plot of No. 6 might be weak, but while a stronger overall plot might be nicer to have, it is largely just a container for the real story of Shion and Nezumi navigating through their notions and emotions concerning one another, so maybe let's not be too hard on the brittle candy coating of our delicious gooey center, right?
...Only you might notice my careful sentence wording of a couple paragraphs ago as I say these delicious gooies are what the creator(s) try to do.
Because I can't help but feeling like in addition to not moving their overall plot forward through the entire 85% of the center of the series, the ebb and flow of how they related to one another didn't seem to be telling a cohesive story either. On top of that, so many of the glimmers of things I saw that I liked or found intriguing about the relationship--whether things I saw when they initially met as children or things I saw being suggested through the series, were dropped, fumbled, or not used to their full effect.
First there's Shion. In these sorts of stories--those stories where a romantic, dangerous character sweeps into the life of someone living a "normal" existence--the normal character's interest in the romantic character I find understandable, but frequently the romantic character's supposed attachment to the normal character unconvincing. (I know. It's wish fulfillment for all us normal people. I still grumble. XD)
But actually here, I get it. If Shion had just been a naive bleeding heart, I could be wrong, but I'd bet that Nezumi would have been grateful to him but inwardly just rolled his eyes at the comfy lives of No. 6 citizens and eventually mostly forgotten about him. But Shion was an odd kid. He was an excited little boy with a needle, but also extremely intelligent. He was completely sheltered, but unfailingly calm and capable in a completely foreign situation. Naive, but curious.
Still, he's a kid from No. 6, and Nezumi is undoubtedly the more worldly, and attempts to put on a superior manner with him, yet every other thing that comes out of the boy's mouth is such a surprise he scarcely knows what to think of him--can't compartmentalize him like he was likely so sure he could. (Also, Shion supposedly senses that something in No. 6 isn't right and feels suffocated and Nezumi notices this, right? Though I don't think that a bit of window yelling and weird daydreams got that across as well as they meant it to.) Despite himself, Nezumi ends up talking and laughing with him like an equal.
Fast forward, and Nezumi is rescuing Shion from No. 6. He's back to acting superior, being condescending and bossing Shion around, but hey, Shion is the clueless one that doesn't know wtf is going on, so maybe a little of it's called for. Anywya, Nezumi's also bragging about being taller, a sign he's trying maybe a little too hard to emphasize his superiority, a potential sign someone isn't so sure of their superiority after all....right? ^_^;
Fast forward to when they're living together...and it looks like the bragging may have been a false beacon. Nezumi still treats Shion the same damn way. He belittles him, ignores his questions, mocks his concerns and emotions. What's more, Shion seems to have changed his attitude a bit, too (though it's hard to say whether it was Nezumi's treatment of him that made Shion behave differently or Shion's behavior that allowed Nezumi's attitude to trample him so much more than before).
Younger Shion was quirkily curious, frank, and fairly assured. Older Shion is...full of flustered helplessness. I swear half the time he and Nezumi fight, he's half a step away from stamping his foot prettily. He's still got the quirky honesty, but now these sorts of comments of his tend almost entirely (I do think maybe the novel had a little more variety to it but still...) to sweet little emotional confessions (which are cute, but when that's all there is he comes off as big-hearted-unguarded-fool rather than quirky-frankness-that-can-sometimes-be-touching that I thought it was going for before).
Shion's attitude can make sense. He's been very suddenly flung from the world he knows to a much grittier one. It makes sense for him to lose some confidence, but... having a strange kid show up with a gunshot wound in your window is a pretty gritty reality, too, yet he dealt with that fine. So it would also have made sense for him to deal with this new turn of events while still retaining more of his self-assurance, and I think that would have made for a more interesting dynamic between he and Nezumi.
Instead, Nezumi doesn't respect Shion. It's one of the conflicts of the story--Shion, thank god, punches him for it later--and it's a fine conflict, but seeing Shion get smeared into the ground and then get back up smiling pleasantly isn't really satisfying. What happened to the Nezumi that seemed so charmed by Shion's oddness that he had difficulty looking down on him as he clearly meant to? I had figured through the story that "difficulty looking down on him" and "charmed" feelings would grow to actual respect for the way Shion thinks and sees the world, yet by the end--even after the fight when Nezumi agrees to treat him more equally--he's still hiding things from Shion, protecting his naive sensibilities from the world rather than understanding Shion can take it.
Nezumi sometimes asks himself why he's keeping with Shion when it clearly holds so many dangers, and while my fangirl heart wants them to stay together--and sees reasons Nezumi COULD have for staying if they were developed more--when I look at Shion the way he seems to see him (not someone as he respects but something like a helpless thing he irritatedly protects, almost like a pet) his motivation for staying with him seems a little mystifying to me as well.
At the same time, Nezumi's frequent insistence that Shion didn't matter to him as much as he clearly did--or that their relationship would eventually go sour--got on my nerves as well. Especially when he could go from saying or thinking such things in one scene to saying and doing things so completely opposite in the next. Lack of self awareness can attribute for some of that, it's a frequent and not at all bad relationship plot device, but it was for me far beyond the level of believability.
(And if there needed to be another barrier toward them being happy together, why not further develop Nezumi's supposed "fear" of Shion? It was spoken of a bit more in the novel, but from what I saw it still seemed random and little used there. It makes a lot of sense--Shion grew up in No. 6 feeling repressed. He gets out and talks about how he's feeling so many more emotions now, but what if in addition to repressing good emotions there was something in Shion "monstrous" worth fearing? And the longer he's out and with Nezumi, the more that part of him comes out too? ...That to me makes a heck of a lot more of a compelling reason for Nezumi to feel trepidation about getting closer to Shion than "we're going to be enemies someday cause you want to save the innocent citizens of No. 6 and I don't" or usual in-denial-about-how-much-he-cares song and dance. Plus, hey, it would also make Nezumi's protective behavior be less condescending! Instead of trying to keep the dirty world from sullying pure little Shion, he could be trying to keep the Pandora's-box-of-a-Shion from cracking open even further than it's already started. XD And--if Nezumi thinks himself part of the reason for Shion going a little nutsy--makes his reason for disappearing off into the sunset a little more understandable. ...Though I think fear of intimacy/sudden lack of purpose in life could also be attributed, though whatever it was, THE AUTHOR REALLY SHOULD HAVE SUGGESTED MORE CLEARLY AND DROPPED MORE HINTS AT SUCH ISSUES IN NEZUMI BEFORE THE END AS WELL.)
Still, all this stuff I've been ranting about for the past fiftybajillion paragraphs could mostly all be attributed to personal taste. XD; The Nezumi/Shion dynamic turned out a little more clearly seme/uke-ish than I expected, a dynamic I just don't much like. The real groan-worthy part of it for me was the lack of cohesive story being told even in the character relationship side of the plot. Even if the relationship veered in a direction I was less interested in, it's still got all these potentially interesting elements to their relationship...but instead of making a story that builds on itself, it just sort of juggles them wildly, and while Nezumi and Shion's interactions could still be a delight for me to see, especially for the glimmers of the things I did like so much about them...NOTHING. FREAKING. HAPPENS. (...most of the time. the fight scene was, like, the best thing ever. ...and that's not just my affinity for seeing boys I ship punch each other in pent up emotional rage XD) Nezumi makes overjoyed speeches about how No. 6 is going down to wasps and makes Shion sad. Shion talks about wanting to know the "truth" whatever the crap he means by that. Shion talks about how to save No. 6 from wasps. Nezumi doesn’t want to. Nezumi talks about how they shouldn't get close. Shion asks why he hates No. 6. Shion makes embarrassing heartfelt declarations. Wash, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat.
And the thing is, while I don't mind No. 6 letting plot fall by the wayside in order to focus more on character development in theory, I think (as I've noticed with various really character development centered but low on plot stories that didn't quite work how I think the author wanted) more plot would actually have helped the character development. Plot forces characters into new situations that mix up the relationship.
In this particular case, the wasp plot gave me a lot of hope initially (before I realized it was going basically nowhere) because it is something Shion had more information on than anyone else. Nezumi was strong and street smart and superior in pretty much all the ways that mattered to one's way of life when you don't live in No. 6 anymore. But what if the wasp plot had been shaped a little different, and for one reason or another Nezumi had actually had some sort of stake in it? Shion had seen someone die from it, had nearly died himself, HAD STUDIED ECOLOGY (!!!could actually use his knowledge/greatest strength!!!), and had already used his knowledge a little to guess that the wasps wouldn't be active till spring (psh, though then they went and made that a useless observation *more groaning*). Shion would have been the expert in something that mattered, and it's not hard to imagine that it could have changed some of their interactions significantly. I confess at first I found the idea of parasitic wasps a bit wtf, and in the end if anything it got even more wtf (and oh boy did it), but it actually might have been a really well-chosen device if used differently.
In the end, No. 6 feels a lot to me like what I imagine what the NaNoWriMo novel of a very good author might be like. All these little inspired ideas...that sometimes well-written-ly-but-aimlessly run around each other for the length of a story till it's time to be over and WTF I'VE GOT ONE NIGHT LEFT TO FINISH THIS NOVEL LET'S THROW IN SOME FLOATING BRAIN AND GIANT RAINBOW WASP ACTION.
Getting to experience NaNo No. 6 was a lot better than not getting any No. 6 at all, and I looked forward to every episode. I just wish I'd gotten to see the final draft, and a look at the story I felt like the author might have meant to write. :(
Ok. Now. Convince me I am wrong and just didn't watch/read it right, and that it is wonderful. I want to be convinced it is wonderful. T___T;
...Of course, there is always fandom. Fandom will heal my soul. *goes to attack her list of fic to read* (Actually it already did heal my soul. Because BEST NO. 6 FIC EVAH. READ.)