Darker Than Black 10-14
Even if no one else is watching this show AT LEAST I STILL HAVE fiendery.
fiendery:
Episodes 11 and 12 of Darker than Black were executed really well, but I still feel like I'm going to be disappointed by the series. There's just too much that they keep talking about that the audience can't understand, and if there's not some sort of really impressive, non-copout answer, it'll just be a letdown.)
In specific, I really liked the dynamic between Hei and Nick. I suppose you can't call Nick a foil since they're so alike, and he does very little to show a deep contrast between the two, but he was an interesting tool for character development nonetheless.
For the more technical detail, I really liked that they transitioned the end song in before the credits. I've never liked openings or endings to anime because they always feel too short (like the fadeout they use on virtually every song before they go into the episode/preview clip). So having an instrumental intro start during the last scenes and then launching into the actual end theme was really nice.
I'm curious about what they were talking about when they mentioned Mina's renumeration. She was a contractor? What was her ability? Was I not paying attention well enough?
And finally, we get to see Amber. Well, you know, it only took half the series to get there. We've seen more of Bai than of Amber, and Amber was the one in all of the promo material before the series got started.
--though I do think that the person with the older Bai in Hei's memories is Amber. That's speculation, but I don't see who else it could be. Certainly isn't Havoc.
sub_divided
There's just too much that they keep talking about that the audience can't understand, and if there's not some sort of really impressive, non-copout answer, it'll just be a letdown.
Exactly!
I haven't seen episodes 10+ yet. *off to watch*
...
(After 10):
I love how even the section chief falls for Li Shen Shung. XD Are the producers trying to say something about harmless-seeming men?!
Contrary to this episode, tobacco is not in fact a gateway drug.
(After 11):
South America disappeared?! Also, the entire world is suffering under a mass delusion?!
"You're inside the Gate. The impossible becomes possible, and the possible becomes impossible. As a scientist, I should have a better explanation for you, but that's the best I can offer."
Don't take it too hard, scientist dude. It's not your fault this show makes no sense.
fiendery
I think the only realistic thing so far is that people look their ages and sexes. At least we won't be finding out that Yin is a 30-year-old man.
...I hope I didn't just jinx it.
sub_divided
Just saw 12. All I can say is: what was up with the female researcher?! I mean, I know all the girls fall for Hei, but usually that's because he's nice to them. She knew who he was from the beginning, so he didn't bother to be nice to her -- actually, he was kind of mean to her. But she still fell for him, because he was "nicer than the others."
WHEN?!
I don't know which disturbs me more, the perfection of Hei's innocent act or the fact that the series asks me to believe that he's genuine in spite of it.
Murkiness of the main character aside, I did enjoy the relevation of Nick's "true" identity. He has the same innocent/not innocent thing going on that Hei does. (The world of Darker than Black is really, really cynical. Everyone's a liar, and everyone's working for a syndicate.) I was hoping for a cooler showdown between the two electricity contractors, at least, but all that happened was that mysterious flash of light and ridiculous hallucination.
In the end all we really know about the meteor is that it's shaped like a dream and it allows people to see dreams, and coincidentally, to outside observers it looks like an atomic explosion.
"Contractors can't dream" <-- I seriously wonder who's coming up with this stuff, like everything else that's been said about Contractors so far it's very, very badly off. Though it is true that for the most part, they've shown very little empathy. What makes Hei (and maybe Nick) different from other Contractors, I guess, is that they still retain the ability to feel things strongly, to care. Even though Hei has the deadest eyes in the Universe.
Again: what happened to my cool showdown?!
fiendery
When she said that, I got this really horrible image of what the "others" must've been like because Hei was pretty damn cold with her because she knew his identity. I mean, geez! Even if he was being professional--and really, how was he being nice?
I think it's contractors in general that are murky. After all, there's this whole idea of them being emotionless that's been perpetuated, and then there are the times when they don't seem that way. I trust that Hei really does seem to have emotions and genuinely wants certain things, but he's kind of the guy who always has his own agenda. So really, who's to say?
I'm trying to figure out when we actually see the fragment because it seems that the only time is when Nick takes it out of the locker. Of course, it also seems like Corinna saw it when she was going through the telescopes, but she was hallucinating before then. Hei was the one who was affected the most, and Nick only really saw something when that weird explosion happened.
Gaaah. And what's so significant about this fragment again? Hei's always retrieving things with uses we never know.
It could just be the usual propaganda from what people perceive of contractors. What with their being used as weapons for syndicates, apparently, they just have no soul or aren't human. The fact that the contractors themselves buy into this sometimes is kind of weird though. Don't they know themselves better?
They edited it out for the sake of having Mina have her "But I kind of like you!" spiel. Alas, such is anime. Though I'm still confused about why they were saying she had completed her renumeration...?
sub_divided
I think Hei meant "renumeration" in a more general sense: Mina has "paid back" the syndicate who set her up inside the Gate by helping Hei. (Although in the end, she isn't very much help to him, so this statement still confused me. Maybe Hei plans to cover for her?)
And:
Episodes 13-14
Finally some episodes about what's-her-name, the blind girl. (Yin.) Yin is a "Doll," an emotionless construct with (supposedly) no personality or independent opinions beyond what she's been programmed with. Of course just like it's not true that contractors have no emotions, it's also not true that Dolls have no emotions (or maybe Yin is just Special.)
These episodes were great, at least to the extent that any two episodes about a seemingly emotionless robot who, we, learn, really does have emotions can be great. ^^; A Finnish piano prodigy! I LOLed. I really liked the way the relationship between Krisi's mother and her piano teacher developed -- I thought the way their mutual attraction-but-also-reservation was handled was really classy.
The downside to these episodes is, they came way too late. Waiting until halfway through the series to demonstrate that a major character does have a personality?! Were we supposed to like Yin on the strength of her character design, accepting on faith that there was more to her? (Probably.)
HUANG! ♥
P.S.
Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicle Chapter 159: WHY SO CONVOLUTED. Spoiler, highlight to read:
So Fai's first curse is that he must kill anyone powerful enough to undo the curse he's under, and his second curse is that he must aid and escort Princess Sakura until she reaches Clow Country, and kill anyone who might impede them -- including Syaoran and Kurogane (note emphasis is CLAMP's not mine)?
This...actually makes sense? As a workable Fei Wong Reed plan, I mean. What's throwing me off is the way CLAMP keeps putting the emphasis on Fai's trauma, as if the reason Fei Wong Reed chose these particular curses was to torment him. That wouldn't make sense since, Dreamgazer or no, there was no way Fei Wong could have known that Fai would become as attached to Syaoran and Kurogane as he did.
I really love that Kurogane was supposed to be Fei Wong Reed's pawn as well, but Yuuko intervened (though Tomoyo) and now he's Yuuko's pawn. I mean, just think about how Kurogane feels about Yuuko. *g*
In conclusion, all signs point to advance planning (was anyone besides v_voltaire interested in a community for re-reading Tsubasa at the rate of, say, two volumes a week?) but unnecessarily confused reveals sometimes obscure this fact.
fiendery:
Episodes 11 and 12 of Darker than Black were executed really well, but I still feel like I'm going to be disappointed by the series. There's just too much that they keep talking about that the audience can't understand, and if there's not some sort of really impressive, non-copout answer, it'll just be a letdown.)
In specific, I really liked the dynamic between Hei and Nick. I suppose you can't call Nick a foil since they're so alike, and he does very little to show a deep contrast between the two, but he was an interesting tool for character development nonetheless.
For the more technical detail, I really liked that they transitioned the end song in before the credits. I've never liked openings or endings to anime because they always feel too short (like the fadeout they use on virtually every song before they go into the episode/preview clip). So having an instrumental intro start during the last scenes and then launching into the actual end theme was really nice.
I'm curious about what they were talking about when they mentioned Mina's renumeration. She was a contractor? What was her ability? Was I not paying attention well enough?
And finally, we get to see Amber. Well, you know, it only took half the series to get there. We've seen more of Bai than of Amber, and Amber was the one in all of the promo material before the series got started.
--though I do think that the person with the older Bai in Hei's memories is Amber. That's speculation, but I don't see who else it could be. Certainly isn't Havoc.
sub_divided
There's just too much that they keep talking about that the audience can't understand, and if there's not some sort of really impressive, non-copout answer, it'll just be a letdown.
Exactly!
I haven't seen episodes 10+ yet. *off to watch*
...
(After 10):
I love how even the section chief falls for Li Shen Shung. XD Are the producers trying to say something about harmless-seeming men?!
Contrary to this episode, tobacco is not in fact a gateway drug.
(After 11):
South America disappeared?! Also, the entire world is suffering under a mass delusion?!
"You're inside the Gate. The impossible becomes possible, and the possible becomes impossible. As a scientist, I should have a better explanation for you, but that's the best I can offer."
Don't take it too hard, scientist dude. It's not your fault this show makes no sense.
fiendery
I think the only realistic thing so far is that people look their ages and sexes. At least we won't be finding out that Yin is a 30-year-old man.
...I hope I didn't just jinx it.
sub_divided
Just saw 12. All I can say is: what was up with the female researcher?! I mean, I know all the girls fall for Hei, but usually that's because he's nice to them. She knew who he was from the beginning, so he didn't bother to be nice to her -- actually, he was kind of mean to her. But she still fell for him, because he was "nicer than the others."
WHEN?!
I don't know which disturbs me more, the perfection of Hei's innocent act or the fact that the series asks me to believe that he's genuine in spite of it.
Murkiness of the main character aside, I did enjoy the relevation of Nick's "true" identity. He has the same innocent/not innocent thing going on that Hei does. (The world of Darker than Black is really, really cynical. Everyone's a liar, and everyone's working for a syndicate.) I was hoping for a cooler showdown between the two electricity contractors, at least, but all that happened was that mysterious flash of light and ridiculous hallucination.
In the end all we really know about the meteor is that it's shaped like a dream and it allows people to see dreams, and coincidentally, to outside observers it looks like an atomic explosion.
"Contractors can't dream" <-- I seriously wonder who's coming up with this stuff, like everything else that's been said about Contractors so far it's very, very badly off. Though it is true that for the most part, they've shown very little empathy. What makes Hei (and maybe Nick) different from other Contractors, I guess, is that they still retain the ability to feel things strongly, to care. Even though Hei has the deadest eyes in the Universe.
Again: what happened to my cool showdown?!
fiendery
When she said that, I got this really horrible image of what the "others" must've been like because Hei was pretty damn cold with her because she knew his identity. I mean, geez! Even if he was being professional--and really, how was he being nice?
I think it's contractors in general that are murky. After all, there's this whole idea of them being emotionless that's been perpetuated, and then there are the times when they don't seem that way. I trust that Hei really does seem to have emotions and genuinely wants certain things, but he's kind of the guy who always has his own agenda. So really, who's to say?
I'm trying to figure out when we actually see the fragment because it seems that the only time is when Nick takes it out of the locker. Of course, it also seems like Corinna saw it when she was going through the telescopes, but she was hallucinating before then. Hei was the one who was affected the most, and Nick only really saw something when that weird explosion happened.
Gaaah. And what's so significant about this fragment again? Hei's always retrieving things with uses we never know.
It could just be the usual propaganda from what people perceive of contractors. What with their being used as weapons for syndicates, apparently, they just have no soul or aren't human. The fact that the contractors themselves buy into this sometimes is kind of weird though. Don't they know themselves better?
They edited it out for the sake of having Mina have her "But I kind of like you!" spiel. Alas, such is anime. Though I'm still confused about why they were saying she had completed her renumeration...?
sub_divided
I think Hei meant "renumeration" in a more general sense: Mina has "paid back" the syndicate who set her up inside the Gate by helping Hei. (Although in the end, she isn't very much help to him, so this statement still confused me. Maybe Hei plans to cover for her?)
And:
Episodes 13-14
Finally some episodes about what's-her-name, the blind girl. (Yin.) Yin is a "Doll," an emotionless construct with (supposedly) no personality or independent opinions beyond what she's been programmed with. Of course just like it's not true that contractors have no emotions, it's also not true that Dolls have no emotions (or maybe Yin is just Special.)
These episodes were great, at least to the extent that any two episodes about a seemingly emotionless robot who, we, learn, really does have emotions can be great. ^^; A Finnish piano prodigy! I LOLed. I really liked the way the relationship between Krisi's mother and her piano teacher developed -- I thought the way their mutual attraction-but-also-reservation was handled was really classy.
The downside to these episodes is, they came way too late. Waiting until halfway through the series to demonstrate that a major character does have a personality?! Were we supposed to like Yin on the strength of her character design, accepting on faith that there was more to her? (Probably.)
HUANG! ♥
P.S.
Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicle Chapter 159: WHY SO CONVOLUTED. Spoiler, highlight to read:
So Fai's first curse is that he must kill anyone powerful enough to undo the curse he's under, and his second curse is that he must aid and escort Princess Sakura until she reaches Clow Country, and kill anyone who might impede them -- including Syaoran and Kurogane (note emphasis is CLAMP's not mine)?
This...actually makes sense? As a workable Fei Wong Reed plan, I mean. What's throwing me off is the way CLAMP keeps putting the emphasis on Fai's trauma, as if the reason Fei Wong Reed chose these particular curses was to torment him. That wouldn't make sense since, Dreamgazer or no, there was no way Fei Wong could have known that Fai would become as attached to Syaoran and Kurogane as he did.
I really love that Kurogane was supposed to be Fei Wong Reed's pawn as well, but Yuuko intervened (though Tomoyo) and now he's Yuuko's pawn. I mean, just think about how Kurogane feels about Yuuko. *g*
In conclusion, all signs point to advance planning (was anyone besides v_voltaire interested in a community for re-reading Tsubasa at the rate of, say, two volumes a week?) but unnecessarily confused reveals sometimes obscure this fact.