Fucker really wants FE to be a "dragons bad, humanity fuck yeah" series so badly. As the saying goes, he can cope and seethe while every future game (hopefully) debunks his views.

In one of the spin off games (I don't know which one), Marth explicitly says that if you hate dragons simply because they're a dragon, then you're no different from his enemies. The series is all about co-existence and characters coming together regardless if they're human or dragon and this guy really trying to be like "I hate certain FE fans being anti-human but don't mind me being anti-dragon and coming up with stupid excuses such as them being colonizers trying to oppress humanity or being mad with power" as if humanity can't be the same. No wonder this guy dislikes Engage.

Combining these!

It's certainly an odd perspective to have because while everyone can admit there are unquestionably evil dragons in the series, 9 times out of 10 the origin of evil started with humans being jackasses, and that being discriminatory is bad for progress. Medeus' most memorable line is him saying that so long as wickedness in man's heart remains, evil will return, so it's been a thing for 2 decades and half at this point.

And liking humanity and how we come together to improve the world is great and worthy of praise, but also! There has to be realization and acceptance that humans can be assholes, and that the message of "we may be weak alone but we're strong together" can be darkly spun into "we're strong together so let's oppress and step over the weak and unaware minorities", and that's precisely how stuff happens in both FE and the real world; but unlike FE we don't have dragons, so who is the example that we float to next? Oppressed minorities across races, gender, ability, class, body type, etc.

Like, you'd think it'd be a given that views on humans should be nuanced and true appreciation and love for humankind can only come after accepting all of the nasty that we've done to each other and the rest of the world.

I think, and this occurs to me recently after watching his fantastic speech for the ten billionth time, what i woulda wanted from edelgard as a character is basically whats going on with gaius baelsar in final fantasy xiv [specifically during a realm reborn phase of things]. because strip away a lot of the context around the two characters and there is a surprising amount of similarities.

both have a firm might makes right attitude driving the core majority of their beliefs and world view

both are characters who utterly detest religion and deities as things the weak cling to as a means of compensating for their own shortcomings

both have an "I alone can fix it" attitude about the world around them and thus believe in the righteousness of their own actions by virtue of the ends they aim to achieve. the ends justify the means mindsets.

by virtue of their ends justify the means mindsets both ally with scary dark magic secret society advanced manipulator type groups as means of procuring short term advantages such as super weapons, with the justification that they can deal with and eradicate the evil mole people later once their immediate objectives are fulfilled. They both do this despite utterly detesting the group they ally with because they perceive those people as less dangerous then they actually are.

well both aim to be utterly ruthless in the prosecution of their objectives, they are more sensitive to their subordinates needs and fates then they would otherwise like themselves to be even as they sacrifice those subordinates to achieve their goals.

both genuinely believe in the empires of their settings as forces for good in the world that need to expand and conquer lesser nations because only under their glorious hegemony can the course of the world and history be rightly hemmed.

The difference that makes me like gaius quite a lot well being fairly indifferent to edelgard however, comes down to I think a matter of presentation.

Gaius is fierce, bold, forward with what he believes and why he acts the way he does. His very presence steals the show of whatever scene he tends to show up in both in a metaphorical and a very deliberate sense of emphasizing him in the framing of any given scene. hes unapologetic, making an overture to you the player to join him because your so awesome yes, but its very much in the sense of becoming an instrument of his will as he treads the path to glory. and when you refuse he admires you all the more for it and proudly and loudly declares how defeating you will prove not only his righteousness but his supremacy over any and all who might try to impede his path.

edelgard is quite, demure even in most of her scenes. she gets a few speeches sure but they dont ever really reach the level of roaring bombast that gaius puts into every fucking line. its to the point that I would argue shes demphasized whenever shes on screen. this isnt to say shes some waifish stuttering introverted mess mind, but i think its very telling that her presence in the grondor cg both pre but especially post timeskip is not only fairly minimal but also emphasized to be reserved or hesitant in the brief moment she does appear. that doesnt speak of a bold conqueror to me, that speaks of a distant almost imperceptible ruler. someone whos either got a layer of armour on so thick as to be unapproachable or who's just a tool in a larger game they're powerless to stop [especially that second portion of things]. oh player san, why must we fight? i just wanted to walk on your path... and maybe hold your hand... and all that malarkey.

and that, that I think is the difference in what makes me vastly prefer one over the other. gaius gets to be the master of his own destiny even as he fucks ups, a figure to be admired even when coming into inevitable conflict with him because of his extreme ambitions. edelgard isn't presented in that manner despite otherwise being treated narratively like she is that. in terms of presentations shes emphasized to not be the master of her own destiny, to be someone pitied and cried over. she couldn't help it, shes just a pawn of destiny and the grand game. and that's bullshit because she very much is an active agent within the narrative. a discordance between presentation and writing. and that sucks.

Press F for no Hi-Fi Rush sequel. Microsoft doing the sham video game industry cycle of destroying studios for short term appeasement of shareholders.

:| :| :|

I swear you can look at a good 90% of Utterly Bloody Stupid Decisions and it can be chalked up to "appease shareholders."

i just watched the most wild thunderstorm and I am simultaneously in awe and also having an existential crisis about how nature is an unstoppable force of destruction that we are but flies in the face of.

??? my dude, that is not an accurate description at all. at best hes a tertiary villain and the most he shares with sasuke is a generalized revenge motive, which you can attribute to basically any character in fiction ever.

It more so just sounds like you weren't paying attention to the story.

Tosens backstory is such nonsense

"my friend got killed by a guy in this organisation so i joined it too for a REVENGE. Whether i killed this guy or not is irrelevant. What's more relevant is that I'll make friends here and kill them myself for JUSTICE"

Also why that guy™ got away with his bullshit is never explained just like all the problems established in the first chapters in soul society are glossed over because "central 46 were bad but aizen killed them so sunshine lollipops and rainbows now". This is so frustrating

i mean yeah most stories tend to fall into easily recognizable patterns, its why tropes, genres and cliches are a thing to begin with. just kinda curious why tosen specifically seems to bug you is all, when he's hardly the most egregious character in bleach when it comes to character writing sob backstories and the potential sense making threads therein.

unless of course you just dont like bleach in general which i can understand.

Tosens backstory is such nonsense

"my friend got killed by a guy in this organisation so i joined it too for a REVENGE. Whether i killed this guy or not is irrelevant. What's more relevant is that I'll make friends here and kill them myself for JUSTICE"

Also why that guy™ got away with his bullshit is never explained just like all the problems established in the first chapters in soul society are glossed over because "central 46 were bad but aizen killed them so sunshine lollipops and rainbows now". This is so frustrating

That's exactly the solution he came to yeah. thats where the tragedy is suppose to come into there man, where he suffered a terrible loss due to the cruelties/injustices of the world he lived in and instead of being able to reckon with and overcome that personal grief he immersed himself in a bitter and caustic mindset, to the point of costing him the bonds and connections he could have formed with characters like sajin or hisagi, that saw serving egomaniacal jackass #1 aizen as the path forwards because aizen effectively offered the opportunity to burn the world down.

Like, hes not suppose to be healthily coping with any of this man, hes a deeply flawed individual making deeply flawed choices.

Now granted, if that tragedy doesn't resonate with you I think thats perfectly understandable. In my opinion tosen is in general underwritten and kinda forgettable, at his most interesting in his fight with zaraki but kinda aimless afterwards like kubo lost the thread of what he wanted to do with tosen.

Just pointing out that bleach is pretty damn forward with whats going on with tosen. like this isn't complicated or hidden, its just the most blatant and forward interpretation of the text possible. sajin even monologues about it in their fight in the fake kakura town.

Tosens backstory is such nonsense

"my friend got killed by a guy in this organisation so i joined it too for a REVENGE. Whether i killed this guy or not is irrelevant. What's more relevant is that I'll make friends here and kill them myself for JUSTICE"

Also why that guy™ got away with his bullshit is never explained just like all the problems established in the first chapters in soul society are glossed over because "central 46 were bad but aizen killed them so sunshine lollipops and rainbows now". This is so frustrating

the cook time on that soup is Forever

I once heard someone compare the current era of video games to the era of hollywood filmaking that produced films such as 1963's Cleopatra. That film was a massive undertaking with a large production team [for the time] and a massive amount of extras and sets to accommodate its massive scale, and that was something a lot of movies at the time were aiming to achieve.

They were also incredibly expensive films that ended up causing something of a collapse for hollywood for a time that opened up opportunities for smaller creator driven projects that we'd consider some of the greatest movies now a days.

I can't help but feel the comparison was atleast somewhat apt to whats going on with videogames right now.

didn't we do this like... fifteen... twenty years ago?

russia saying belarus people, and belarus also saying belarus people for entirely normal reasons i'm sure.

hand in unlovable hand

i kinda like it as a painting, and i imagine its probably more impressive in person, but it is also a weird choice for the charles first official portrait as king painting given its distinctly haunting nature.

i cant get over the king charles portrait. they made that thing to age in his place. that painting hangs in the house of a too-friendly family you find in the post apocalyptic wasteland who inexplicably has a ready supply of fresh meat. if mario jumped into that painting he wouldn't find a charming platformer he would be flayed and hanged like a medieval criminal by an unseeable force in a droning red void. that painting is a color blindness test for people who work in IT but believe in the divine right of kings. that painting is going to weep the sequel to blood. after he dies charles is gonna crawl outta that thing like sadako.

diamond dust rebellion SUCKS, not because its an anime movie nor because its a fanservice fan wanking movie of one specific character.

diamond dust rebellion sucks because its stupid yet so absolutely pleased with itself and on the fuckin nose. and not even stupid in a fun way, just in a painful to watch kinda way.

im kinda impressed actually at how quickly bleach: diamond dust rebellion is pissing me off [decided to see if bleaches movies had anything goin for em].

like, memories of nobody was wonky but it had a vision. it had heart. it had some degree of care put into its construction.

diamond dust rebellion immediately lays on the flimsy fucking ground work from the get go, enough so that i seriously doubt its going to improve much.

im kinda impressed actually at how quickly bleach: diamond dust rebellion is pissing me off [decided to see if bleaches movies had anything goin for em].

like, memories of nobody was wonky but it had a vision. it had heart. it had some degree of care put into its construction.

diamond dust rebellion immediately lays on the flimsy fucking ground work from the get go, enough so that i seriously doubt its going to improve much.

On the one hand, I do want to give Fukuda credit on SEED Freedom. He seems to have listened to some of the criticisms levelled at Kira over the years and wanted to address some of them. He understood that he was always trying to make Kira out to be the strongest mofo in the Cosmic Era and how this desire of his undermined his supposed paragon, so he tried to make a faction that could theoretically take away Kira's status as “the strongest.” Kira isn't the “Ultimate Coordinator,” as there was a hidden goal to the project that Kira failed to meet, and even the Strike Freedom took a beating in the movie after being untouchable in Destiny.

Fukuda's answer of “Kira was doing things out of his belief that he was the only one strong enough to do them” does resonate throughout the entire SEED saga, since the very beginning where Kira criticized others for fighting when they weren't strong enough to win. Doesn't matter if your home is being invaded, if you can't win you shouldn't fight. Hell, Kira doesn't even try in combat when he views his opponents as easy to disable, but will go for a kill if pressured enough despite the fandom's belief that he doesn't kill. It makes it sound like Kira only spares his enemies because they're weaker than him and not worth the trouble, a very social Darwinist take, whereas those with the strength to challenge him may not survive.

But Fukuda's solution to this character flaw, that Kira needs to act out of his love for others, ignores a few things. It ignores that Kira did act based on his connection to others, as Shinn called him out for in Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 Kira fights to protect what's important to him. So trying to reframe Kira as doing things because he's powerful ignores that, but at the same time it makes Kira's actions look sinister. That Kira was using his power to shape the world as he saw fit because he was the one strong enough to do so, which in terms of Destiny means he rejects the Destiny plan because it takes away “freedom.”

But Kira doesn't just decide for himself, he decides for all of humanity to reject the plan that is supposed to solve issues and stop future conflicts. Fukuda actually talked about this, how the Destiny Plan was supposed to actually work despite the show not explaining it in the original airing, and therefore we were supposed to see Kira's actions as him choosing a harder path for humanity in order to maintain freedom. This is where the infamous quote that Kira and his cohorts may have strayed from the path of justice came from, because we were supposed to side with Kira (despite the show trying to say not to blindly follow leaders) but he came across far more negatively than intended.He's also said in recent interviews that Destiny was supposed to question SEED's moral of “why fighting is wrong and why we should never fight” by asking if fighting is always bad. Fukuda ackowledges that wars are going to happen in the world Kira fights for, but his ultimate solution is to keep fighting to maintain peace.

I think it's telling that 00, which deconstructed the idea of “fighting to end fighting” in it's first season ended with a quote by Albert Einstein; “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” 00 rejected Fukuda's thesis, that peace can be kept if we keep fighting for it.

Freedom doesn't want to say that Kira was wrong in doing so, it just wants to realign his character so that it's more like he was in SEED. He doesn't give a shit that Destiny had Kira as a violent terrorist who used mobile suits that were banned by treaty in order to push humanity down the path he believed in, because the message at the end is still the same. Wars are going to break out, fighting is going to continue, and Kira is still going to protect what is important to him. Like Destiny, it's still going to ignore the millions that have died as a consequence of his actions. They're just going to keep working to maintain the peace while the novelization ends with the reveal that the events of the movie inspired a resurgence in support for the anti-Coordinator terrorist group Blue Cosmos while also making Coordinator-supremacists angry the antagonists lost. It really feels that because of Kira's actions in Destiny, everything went back to the way they were at the start of SEED except now people have more powerful weapons.

Considering that Gundam is known for it's anti-war messages, the ending of Destiny feels so wrong. That it goes against a franchise that has held out the hope that past tragedies won't be repeated because people will find another means to resolve conflict. Sure, it says that sometimes you have to fight, but it doesn't treat fighting as the only solution. There's a reason Bellri and Loran survived by walking away from the conflict at the end of their shows, why the space flower in 00 exists after Setsuna is able to communicate with the aliens, why Tekkadan trying to get ahead with violence ends in their defeat... and so much more. Amuro gave his life to show humanity the possibility of the human spirit, he didn't save the world simply by killing Char, nor did the UC know lasting peace after the latest Zeon threat was defeated only for the Federation to go back to business as usual.

And I just have to ask, did this attempt to fix Kira actually come from Fukuda himself? He's admitted in the past that the anti-war themes of SEED, the messages he wanted to contest in Destiny, came from one of the producers. Considering that the script for the movie was made out of various scripts Fukuda's wife wrote before her death Frankensteined together before finally being accepted, this attempt could have been something mandated by Fukuda's higher-ups.

I acknowledge that Fukuda tried to fix the problem, something a lot of creators nowadays wouldn't dream of doing. Lot of people like what he did, but for me it's still that he didn't understand the problems and just repackaged them in a way people are more forgiving to. I'm still going to hold that the Cosmic Era is morally broken and the one AU I don't really like (and would be the one of the two I wouldn't be upset seeing hit with the Moonlight Butterfly, followed by Post Disaster because, really, there's no one really to root for. The show implies Kudelia is a pawn of the mafia ffs, putting Mars under their control), which is a shame because I actually did like the first SEED despite it's problems. But when Fukuda got more control of Destiny, possibly because of rejecting any script not written by his wife despite her holding up production with them being late, it was for the worst.

He's always talked about the old school robots as the “roots” he wanted to return Gundam to, when in reality they were the mold Gundam broke. But even then, those older shows were about giving a protagonist power with them learning to use it responsibly. Kira never learned the latter, he was just given power because he's supposedly a good guy and then given more power because he's a good guy. Fukuda didn't understand the shows he attempted to emulate, and the fact he's been given Grendizer is worrying to me. Hopefully, the rest of the staff can keep him under control.

episodes 3-5 are i would argue a string of episodes that probably coulda been contracted a bit into a more compact package, as they're largely taken up by somewhat protracted actions pieces and some rather bizarre spontaneous pontificating that the show is gonna tread to god damn death over time. its certainly not an uncommon pacing problem tbh, where the characters do a thing and then run back to base to discuss what happened and what to do next but...

to briefly compare the original gundam and gundam seed for a sec, 0079 well not necessarily having the same highs of tension that seeds opening sequence does, the original 0079 was able to maintain a much more consistent sense of tension and pacing.

gene goes off script and attacks without chars say so, the colony gets wrecked, and amuro gets in the gundam taking gene and the other zaku apart quite quickly. oh shit, things have gotten outta hand for char, who only then calls a meeting to figure out his next move well the white base starts getting its shit together/the vaguest outline of a plan. and as char is wont to do, its decisive and fast heading out personally to clown on amuro. by comparison well the initial attack on helliopolis is quick and decisive, things quickly start to get muddled and slowed down. athrun leaves the battlefield, rau enters the colony, damage happens to the colony, rau goes back to the ship to plot the next move, athrun joins the battlefield, damage happens to the colony, then the colony breaks apart. its very stop and start and stop and start is all, and there coulda been a smoother way to handle this which seed just... does not do at any given opportunity.

i keep starting and stopping gundam seed over and over again, and i think part of the problem is that i actually rather like the very first episode of gundam seed. mostly in comparison to the rest of itself sure, but even in general i would argue its a solid first episode that successfully racquets the tension and chaos of the situation and that successfully manages to convey its theme/core idea of everyday life suddenly upset by the chaos, paranoia, and deceptions of wartime.

so really, its more so the second episode that screws the entire god damn pooch setting up a lot of the problems seed never really escaped from as an independent story and within the wider chain of gundam narratives.

i generally dont comment on these things, cause this isn't really the kind of blog set up for that stuff and i prefer a degree of anonymity/privacy.

but man. its almost like violently removing student protesters from encampment protests, in fact galvanizes encampment protests.

like a really did mean it, but god is it apparent going over episode 2 again. kira literally does bullshit program the strike into 'running good' in a literal minute [cause god forbid we come up with a different excuse to get kira piloting the gundam], characters are running around the place for no reason, the one ship fucking explodes by running into a wall so we can force mu to be where he needs to be. the pacings wonky and just plain off, and the characters feel wonky and unreal outside of natarale and her thing.

also, it does further occur to me that murrue i've never really been able to find... interesting because she feels weirdly undefined as a character. if your going off just the first/2nd episode shes comes across as an important engineer that was working on the project, which would logically follow through to her being the archangels engineer adult/officer during the subsequent voyage. but no, shes otherwise treated as just another military officer for the rest of the series and its sequels [as far as i remember anyways] and gets command of the archangel despite natarale being the vastly more competent officer of the two whos set up as a young military officer from the very start.

and i bring any of it up, cause it doesn't really feel like an intentional subversion to me. rather it reads more as lazy and haphazard writing.

i keep starting and stopping gundam seed over and over again, and i think part of the problem is that i actually rather like the very first episode of gundam seed. mostly in comparison to the rest of itself sure, but even in general i would argue its a solid first episode that successfully racquets the tension and chaos of the situation and that successfully manages to convey its theme/core idea of everyday life suddenly upset by the chaos, paranoia, and deceptions of wartime.

so really, its more so the second episode that screws the entire god damn pooch setting up a lot of the problems seed never really escaped from as an independent story and within the wider chain of gundam narratives.