Where do we go from here?
Well, while I hang around waiting for Episode 42 to air, I found I had a lot of thoughts sloshing around in my brain, and I thought I'd write them down. I have at least one idea about where this series could be headed, and I think it's interesting, if maybe not accurate. Read the following only if you're bored, or want to see just how goofy this series can make a person.
There's an interesting thread running through this series: "You are who you are, and you can't get away from that." Black Star has lost a couple of fights, and that's sobered him up a bit. He really isn't the best fighter ever, at least not now, and maybe he isn't godlike after all. Tsubaki also seems to be denying herself; if I'm not mistaken, it's implied that she's holding back, and could be a lot more powerful than she's showing us.
Death the Kid is pretty stable as far as self-knowledge goes, but I think he's going to come up hard against some truths about his father and what Shibusen is all about.
I wouldn't be surprised if Maka finds out that she's not the most powerful technician in the group. She might not be good enough to take her father's place--and maybe she'll realize that doing all this, just so she can smack him down, is not a very good reason. She's hardly going to humiliate Spirit by surpassing him, he'd only be proud of her. He's a ditz, but he loves her. So to sum up, it looks like some characters are getting reality checks about who they really are.
Which brings me to Stein. During the last part of Episode 41, when he was having that heart-to-heart hallucination with his younger self, I felt sure that the advice to 'go home' meant to go back to Shibusen and his friends, back to whatever sanity he could lay his hands on. But that's my idea of his 'home', and his personal reality is quite different. Unlike the younger characters, he figured out who he was a long time ago. He went home to his own true nature, and the truth is, he's Just Not A Very Nice Person.
So now, it looks like he's in Medusa's hands. Now here's a question: what's she going to do with him now that she has him? Because she certainly wants him for some purpose of her own; she didn't torment him into this state just so he could lounge around on her floor. Furthermore, she's going to have to keep a sharp eye on him now. We'll see how he behaves in the next episode or two, it depends on his mental state. If he's somewhat stabilized, something tells me he'll argue with her every step of the way. Even if he does now want to see the world plunged into chaos, he'll have different ideas on how to go about it. If he's still a twitching wreck, he'll have to be locked up so he doesn't climb the walls or start dismantling random minions. And that's still a pretty good result for Medusa, because she's taken one of Shibusen's more powerful pieces off the board. But I doubt she's going to have him sit around looking decorative, because Medusa likes to alter things and hack into people, make use of them. Look at what she did to her own child.
Poor Crona, huh? Ultimately she was a real disappointment. You can tell Medusa expected big things from that project. She invested years of training and time, some hard-to-find materials, and it just didn't jell. She wound up with this half-baked creature, very powerful but hesitant, confused and hagridden. Crona never wanted to kill, never wanted to cause any trouble, really. The will to destroy just wasn't there. And yet, even with those handicaps, Crona almost became a Kishin. It was close. Medusa should have started with a different subject, someone with a vicious streak, someone with a real desire to cut the world to pieces.
And now she has Stein.
I dunno, what do you think? Would it be too hard for her to dig up a demon weapon and some black blood, and go for Version 2.0? I can tell you one thing; I'd LOVE to see the plot go in that direction, just for my own enjoyment. It would make for the most monumental badassery, not to mention the poetic justice of Stein being the one who gets experimented on. But of course now that I've written all this down, it will turn out that I got some bad subs, all my plot points are baloney, and the witches will be defeated by flying cupcakes from space or whatever.
And that ends my giant wall of text. Please feel free to correct me, argue with me, scream imprecations or whatever, because frankly I'm nuts about this series and would welcome discussion. I probably am wrong about a lot of stuff, because I watched 41 episodes in 10 days and I'm kind of loopy in the head as a result. At least I haven't read any fanfic; then I'd be really confused about events.
Here's hoping that 42 is a doozy!
There's an interesting thread running through this series: "You are who you are, and you can't get away from that." Black Star has lost a couple of fights, and that's sobered him up a bit. He really isn't the best fighter ever, at least not now, and maybe he isn't godlike after all. Tsubaki also seems to be denying herself; if I'm not mistaken, it's implied that she's holding back, and could be a lot more powerful than she's showing us.
Death the Kid is pretty stable as far as self-knowledge goes, but I think he's going to come up hard against some truths about his father and what Shibusen is all about.
I wouldn't be surprised if Maka finds out that she's not the most powerful technician in the group. She might not be good enough to take her father's place--and maybe she'll realize that doing all this, just so she can smack him down, is not a very good reason. She's hardly going to humiliate Spirit by surpassing him, he'd only be proud of her. He's a ditz, but he loves her. So to sum up, it looks like some characters are getting reality checks about who they really are.
Which brings me to Stein. During the last part of Episode 41, when he was having that heart-to-heart hallucination with his younger self, I felt sure that the advice to 'go home' meant to go back to Shibusen and his friends, back to whatever sanity he could lay his hands on. But that's my idea of his 'home', and his personal reality is quite different. Unlike the younger characters, he figured out who he was a long time ago. He went home to his own true nature, and the truth is, he's Just Not A Very Nice Person.
So now, it looks like he's in Medusa's hands. Now here's a question: what's she going to do with him now that she has him? Because she certainly wants him for some purpose of her own; she didn't torment him into this state just so he could lounge around on her floor. Furthermore, she's going to have to keep a sharp eye on him now. We'll see how he behaves in the next episode or two, it depends on his mental state. If he's somewhat stabilized, something tells me he'll argue with her every step of the way. Even if he does now want to see the world plunged into chaos, he'll have different ideas on how to go about it. If he's still a twitching wreck, he'll have to be locked up so he doesn't climb the walls or start dismantling random minions. And that's still a pretty good result for Medusa, because she's taken one of Shibusen's more powerful pieces off the board. But I doubt she's going to have him sit around looking decorative, because Medusa likes to alter things and hack into people, make use of them. Look at what she did to her own child.
Poor Crona, huh? Ultimately she was a real disappointment. You can tell Medusa expected big things from that project. She invested years of training and time, some hard-to-find materials, and it just didn't jell. She wound up with this half-baked creature, very powerful but hesitant, confused and hagridden. Crona never wanted to kill, never wanted to cause any trouble, really. The will to destroy just wasn't there. And yet, even with those handicaps, Crona almost became a Kishin. It was close. Medusa should have started with a different subject, someone with a vicious streak, someone with a real desire to cut the world to pieces.
And now she has Stein.
I dunno, what do you think? Would it be too hard for her to dig up a demon weapon and some black blood, and go for Version 2.0? I can tell you one thing; I'd LOVE to see the plot go in that direction, just for my own enjoyment. It would make for the most monumental badassery, not to mention the poetic justice of Stein being the one who gets experimented on. But of course now that I've written all this down, it will turn out that I got some bad subs, all my plot points are baloney, and the witches will be defeated by flying cupcakes from space or whatever.
And that ends my giant wall of text. Please feel free to correct me, argue with me, scream imprecations or whatever, because frankly I'm nuts about this series and would welcome discussion. I probably am wrong about a lot of stuff, because I watched 41 episodes in 10 days and I'm kind of loopy in the head as a result. At least I haven't read any fanfic; then I'd be really confused about events.
Here's hoping that 42 is a doozy!