now THAT was a fucking episode

ending of ff16 discussion below, pls do not click if you wanna avoid spoilers <3

I think FFXVI has a lot of potential, but it does fall quite short of the mark in some places. I do think the places where it excels far surpasses that, but maybe I'm able to turn a blind eye way easier than other's.

First and foremost, Jill Warrick is a potentially really good character, who unfortunately isn't given the same amount of love as other side characters in the game. Even characters like Gav and Byron were given more, despite Byron being introduced in the second half of the game, and Gav wasn't even a party main-stay.

Giving her some more moments to show off her prowess as Shiva's Dominant could've gone a long way. More independence from the Crystals' Curse, so to speak. I understand that the idea is Jill is on her last legs regarding the curse, but I really think they should've brushed that over, for the sake of her character.

Secondly, the arc with Barnabas was undercooked and rushed. Execution was weak compared to a similar scenario in FFXIV, where the main antagonist of Stormblood has the sole purpose of being the main character's rival. If the first fight against Barnabas was player-controlled and took place far sooner in the story, I'd be more inclined to buy into it.

Not only that, but the Barnabas arc is very isolated, compared to a lot of the other arcs in the game, most notably Kupka. Barnabas should've been presented a little earlier, or at least, his arc should've been quite a bit longer if it was going to take up the last quarter of the game.

I'm somewhat alright with Barnabas being the segway into Ultima as the main antagonist, but at the same time, it feels rather cheap to not given Barnabas his own full-fledged motivations and character arc, like we saw with Benedikta and Kupka. It's a minor writing thing I didn't personally enjoy, but at the same time, it was fun watching him snap out of his Ultima trance and become a beast at the very end of his fight.

The final segment of the game, I feel could've been made stronger if Ultima was a bit more discovered as a threat. Yeah, he was the god we had to kill, but we knew so little about him until the final 10% of the game. And at that point, he had finally become an acting force. I feel that's too late into the game for something like that to be happening, but maybe that's just me again.

The ending overall? I feel it could've used some more oversight. Joshua's death was expected, though I'm sad to see it was simply because of the Ultima shard. I don't think that writing his death via that shard was a good move, solely because it didn't feel like him keeping that shard in check had done anything at all, considering how much of an acting force Ultima had been anyways.

I understand the ending was also open-ended regarding Clive's ultimate (haha) fate, but I do wish there had been some more finality. Especially because of the red star Metia fading at the end, and Jill and Torgal crying as if he had definitely died. Me personally, it'd be nice to see Clive just walking back to the Hideaway, his arm turned to stone because of his overuse of magic, but still alive in spite of his fate. I feel THAT would've definitely made the ending better, just seeing that guarantee that he'd truly said "fuck you" to his destiny.

I also understand that the ending is open-ended for that exact reason, so I can guess what happens after without giving me something definitive. But I still would've appreciated if they'd just said if he died or not, outright. I don't enjoy ambiguity that much when the most likely thing is despair, 'cause then I just get my hopes up, just to get them crushed again.

Another small thing I disliked was the pacing started to get wonky at times, versus others where it was taken nice and slow. The segments in the game where you sorta had a dungeon to traverse before a big event were nice, to build up hype towards the big thing. These started to appear very seldomly, and it started to make the game feel like we were moving a mile a minute.

I feel the definitive proof that this worked is in the fight to Titan. And not just Titan as an eikon, but half-primed Hugo Kupka. I feel that was done SO fucking well and I really would've loved to see it again with Barnabas. Having the siege of Rosaria and Clive and Hugo affirming their hatred for each other was sick, especially because you just KNEW there was an eikon fighting waiting for you at the end of the arc, if Sleipnir hadn't stepped in.

Then having the follow-up at Drake's Fang, another lil' dungeon where you finally get to Kupka and he's just going insane, so fucking well done and I loved that rivalry so much.

Compare that entire arc to the end of the game, where you go through a dungeon in Waloed essentially, and the ending just ends up being a dramatic lore dump with a sorta final-boss fight. Meanwhile, the actual final boss doesn't have any pre-emptive dungeon, it's just a cutscene fight before the real fight starts.

Not only that, but chucking in about 14 sidequests right before that final boss and the game trying to pad out this rushed ending really made me realise how unfinalized this section of the game had been. Was it terrible? Not at all, but it wasn't the same quality as the rest of the game had been. Which is a damn shame, 'cause everything pre-Barnabas was god-tier and it's what I want to remember this game for the most.

For the positive side of things, I am very glad that I played this game, because I think I'm gonna feel the lasting impact it had on me for years, even if the ending didn't hit the way I wanted.

Clive Rosfield still stands out to me as one of the best RPG protagonists I've seen in a VERY long time. He's a strong man, unwittingly cruel in his actions, but he owns them, accepts them, and betters himself for his crimes. He is unafraid to cry and shed tears over his anguish, but he wears his sins on his sleeves and fights in spite of his destiny. The first section with him truly accepting his status as the Infernal Eikon, as Ifrit, was some of the best visual story-telling I've ever seen. The presentation was phenomenal, the music was heavenly, and Ben Starr did a phenomenal job as Clive. I sincerely hope Clive ends up setting a standard for protagonists in the future, because I genuinely do believe he's one of the best.

The character designs in this game were all great and enjoyable, and everyone was written in an amazing way. I think follow-up for Clive is definitely tied between Joshua Rosfield and Dion Lesage. I think Joshua has a similar issue to Jill, where he just wasn't used enough in the latter half of the story, but he was sorta written into the ending inherently because of his status as the Phoenix, and Clive's brother. Which is a shame that Jill didn't have that same impact.

Either way, those two were amazing characters that I loved ever since their first appearances. I have a particularly soft spot for Joshua because I can remember the prologue of the game so vividly, with Joshua desperately trying to fight off Ifrit while "Away" is blasting in the background. The choreography of the fight is great, the music is phenomenal, and you really wanna root for Joshua. It makes his appearance later in the game feel like he truly survived devastation and he's working hard to make sure no one suffers a similar fate.

Dion is fantastic, not only as some very nice LGBT representation, but also because he's just really fucking badass? The tragedy of having to witness his own kingdom become a slave to Ultima's wills, all because his father is being manipulated. And he, as a soldier, is being told to follow orders. It's saddening, but you can absolutely understand why he feels trapped. Which makes the moment of his father's murder, the accidental spear that was meant for the child, all the worse to witness. You truly understand why he was caught in his despair and enraged to the point of priming into Bahamut.

I have a lot of thoughts that I might say more on later, but as a final note, the gameplay was phenomenal. The music was god-tier. The eikon fights especially. Titan and Bahamut are easily some of the best stand-outs the game has to offer, but the fights against Typhoon, Garuda, Infernal Ifrit, and even Ultima's final form are incredibly fun. You really do feel like a massive ravaging beast that has a god's power at your hands. It's great, and I genuinely hope more RPGs take pages out of this book. Seriously, the only reason I didn't like the Odin fight was because it lacked this battle system, THAT'S how good it is.

Please elaborate on how Five could've turned into the most insufferable character to watch

Thanks for asking me to elaborate on this text post:

@tessapercygranger​, @waywardd1​ and @margarita-umbrella​ also wanted to see a more detailed version of it, and I ended up writing an essay that’s longer than some of my actual academic essays. So buckle up.

WHY NUMBER FIVE SHOULD BE THE MOST OBNOXIOUS CHARACTER IN TV HISTORY, AND HOW HE MANAGES NOT TO BE

Number Five: The Concept That Could Go Horribly Wrong

Alright, let’s first look at Five in theory in an overarching way, without taking into account the execution of the show. The basic set-up of the character, of course, is being a 58-year-old consciousness in a teenager’s body, due to a miscalculation in time travel. Right off the bat, Five is bar none the most overpowered of the siblings; by the end of Season 2, no one has yet been able to defeat him in a fight. He is a master assassin – and not just any master assassin, but the best one there is – and a survival expert, able to do complex maths and physics without the aid of a calculator, shown to have knowledge of half a dozen languages, has very developed observational skills and, to top that all off, he can manipulate time and space to the point where he can literally erase events that happened and change the course of history. And Five knows how skilled he is; he is arrogant, self-assured and sarcastic, and his streak of goodness is buried deep inside. David Castañeda once described Five in an interview as 90% chocolate with a cherry in the middle, meaning that you have to get through a lot of darkness and bitterness before knowing there is a good core, and I think it’s an excellent metaphor. However, Five is also incredibly, fundamentally terrible at communicating with anyone, and, because he is the only one with time travel abilities, the character a lot of the actual plot - and the moving forward of it - centres around. Also he’s earnestly in love with a mannequin, who is pretty much a projection of his own consciousness that functions as a coping mechanism for all the trauma he has endured. All in all, this gives you a character who looks like a teenager, but with the smug superiority of a fifty-something, who a) is extremely skilled in many different things, b) has a superiority complex, is arrogant and vocal about it, and most of the superiority is expressed through cutting sarcasm, c) has one very hidden ounce of goodness that he is literally the worst at communicating to other human beings, d) is what moves the plot along but is also bad at talking to anyone else, meaning that the plot largely remains with him, and e) his love interest is essentially a projection of himself. Tell me that’s not a character who is destined to be just…obnoxious, annoying, egocentric, a necessary evil that one has to put up with to get through this show. There are so many elements of this characterisation that can and should easily make Five beyond insufferable, but the show manages to avoid it, and I’m putting this down to three aspects.

That Trick of Age and Appearance

Bluntly put, Five as a character would not work if he was anything else than an old man in a 13-year-old body. Imagine this character and all his skills and knowledge, but actually just…a teenager. Immediately insufferable. Same goes for him being around 30, like his siblings, all of which are stunted and traumatised by their father’s abuse. If Five, being comparatively unscathed by Reginald to the point where he explicitly does not want to be defined by his association with his father, were 30 like his siblings, it would just take the bite out of that plot point and also give him a lot less time in the apocalypse, reducing the impact it had on him as a person. And making Five his actual 58-year-old self would make him very similar to Reginald, at least on surface level, with the appearance and attitude. Five and Reginald are two fundamentally different people, but having one of the siblings being a senior citizen that’s dressed to the nines and bosses his siblings around in a relatively self-centred way does open up that parallel, and would take away from Five’s charm as a character. Because pairing the life experience of a 58-year-old with the appearance of a teenager gives you the best of both worlds. You get the other siblings (and a lot of the audience, from a glance in the tags of my gifsets) feeling protective and paternal about Five, but his age and experience also give the justifications for his many skills, his arrogance, in a way, and his ability to decimate a room full of people. It’s the very interesting and not new concept of someone dangerous with the appearance of something harmless, a child. This is also where Five’s singular outfit comes in. I know we like to clown on Five to get a new outfit, but I think what gets forgotten often is how effective this outfit is at making the viewer take him seriously. The preppy school uniform is the perfect encapsulation of the tension between old man in spirit and young teenager in appearance. The blazer, vest and especially the shirt and tie are quite formal, relatively grown up. They’re not something we, the audience, usually associate with a teenage boy wearing; it makes Five just a little bit more grown up. But there is also a reason characters in this show keep bringing up Five’s shorts and his socks, because those are not things that we associate with grown men wearing; they’re the unmistakably childish part of his school uniform. Take a moment and imagine Five wearing a hoodie or a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers; would that outfit work for him as well as the uniform does? Would he be able to command the same kind of respect or seriousness as a character? I don’t think so; the outfit is a lot more pivotal in making Five believable than a lot of people give it credit for.

Writing Nuance

The other big building block in not making Five incredibly insufferable is the writing. Objectively speaking, I think Five is the most well-written, and, more importantly, most coherently written character on the show (which does have to do with the fact that the show’s events are all sequential for him), and his arc and personality remain relatively intact over the course of the two seasons. More to the point, a giant part of what makes Five bearable as a character is that he is allowed to fail. He is written to have high highs and low lows, big victories through his skills and his intelligence, but also catastrophic failures and the freedom to be wrong. His superior intellect and skillset are not the be-all end-all of the plot or his character, just something that influences both. His inability for communication has not (yet) been used to fabricate a contrived misunderstanding that derails the plot and left all of us seething; instead, it’s a characteristic that makes him fail to reconnect with the people he loves. This is a bit simplified, as he does find common ground with Luther, for example, but in general, a lot of the rift between Five and his siblings is that they can’t relate to his traumas and he does not understand the depth of Reginald’s abuse, which is an interesting conflict worth exploring. Another thing that really works in Five’s favour is that he is definitely written to be mean and sarcastic, but it is never driven to the point of complete unlikability, and a lot of the time, the context makes it understandable why he reacts the way he does. Most of the sarcastic lines he gets are actually funny, that certainly helps, but in general, Five is a good example of a bearable character whose default personality is sharp and relatively cold, because it is balanced out with many moments of vulnerability. Delores is incredibly important for this in the first season, she is the main focus of Five’s humanising moments, and well-written as she totes the line between clearly being a coping mechanism for an extremely traumatised man and still coming across to the viewer as the human contact Five needs her to be. In the second season, the vulnerability is about his guilt for his siblings, it’s about Five connecting a little bit better to them. There’s also his relationship with the Commission and the Handler specifically – which honestly could be an essay on its own – that deserves a mention, because the Handler is why Five became the man he is, and this dynamic between creator and creation is explored in a very interesting way – their scenes are some of the most well-written in the entire show. And TUA never falls into the trap of making Five a hero, he is always morally ambiguous at best, and it just makes for an interesting, multi-faceted character, well-written character, and none of the characteristics that should make him unlikeable are allowed to take centre-stage for long enough to be defining on their own. I know a lot of people especially champion the scenes where Five goes apeshit, but without his more nuanced characterisation, if he was like that all the time, those scenes would not hit as hard.

Aidan Gallagher’s Performance is Underrated

But honestly, none of the above would matter that much if the Umbrella Academy didn’t luck out hard with the casting of Aidan Gallagher. I think what he achieves as an actor in this show is genuinely underappreciated. Like, the first season set out to cast six adults having to deal with various ramifications of childhood trauma, and a literal child that had to be able to act smart and wise beyond his years, seamlessly integrate into a family of adults while seeming like an adult, traumatised by the literal end of the world, AND had to be able to create the romantic chemistry of a thirty-year-long marriage with a lifeless department store doll. The only role I could think of to compare is Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire, where she plays a vampire child who, because she is undead, doesn’t age physically, but does mentally, so she’s 400 in a child’s body. And Kirsten Dunst had to do that for a two-hour movie. Five is a main character in a show that spans 20 episodes now. That’s insane, and it’s a risk. Five is a character that can’t be allowed to go wrong; if you don’t buy Five as a character, the entire first season loses believability. And they found someone who could do that not only convincingly, but also likeably. As I said, he is incredibly helped by the costuming department and the script, but Aidan Gallager’s Five has so much personality, he’s threatening and funny and charming and arrogant and heartbreaking. He has the range to be convincing in the quiet moments where Five’s humanity comes to show and in the moments where Five goes completely off the rails. Most child actors act with other children, but he is the only child in the main cast, and holds his own in scenes with adults not as a child, but as an adult on equal footing with the other adult characters. That’s not something to be taken for granted. But even apart from the fact that it’s a child actor who carries a lot of the plot and the drama of a series for adults, Aidan Gallagher’s portrayal of Five is also just so much fun. The comedic timing is on point, he has the dramatic chops for the serious scenes, the mannerisms and visual ticks add to the character rather than distract from him, and his line deliveries, paired with his physical acting, make Five arrogant and smug but never outright malicious and unlikeable. It’s just some terrific acting that really does justice to the character as he is written, but the writing would not be as strong if it wasn’t delivered and acted out the way Aidan Gallagher does. He is an incredible asset for this show.

Alright, onto concluding this rambling. If you made it this far, I commend you, and thank you for it. The point of all of this is that Five, as a character, could have been an unmitigated disaster of a TV character. He is overpowered, arrogant, uncommunicative and could so easily have been either unconvincing or completely unlikeable, but he turned out to be neither. It’s a combination of choices in the costume department, decisions in the writing room, and Aidan Gallagher’s acting skills that make the things that should make him obnoxious and annoying incredibly entertaining, and I hope you liked my long-winded exploration of these. Some nuance was lost along the way, but if I had not stopped myself, this would’ve become a full-blown thesis.

Hey! I saw that you were accepting drabble requests for Control! I was wondering if you could write Dylan's arrival at central executive from his pov? Like what could've been going through his head, how he saw things and how people reacted to him?

Dylan Faden hadn’t been up here in a long time.

He hadn’t been up here since he was small. 

Now, taller and older and with experience of little beyond the walls of a cell, he was sick of life being coherent. Much better to relax into the Hiss, to let the sound in until the rest of his senses followed. Except that he had to talk. Had to stand up straight in front of the woman in the Research whites that scared him, his back stiff. 

Emily Pope. She had introduced herself. She had babbled, like she was afraid of him. She should be, but he felt the insult inherent in the fear, too. It wouldn’t do to let her know he just wanted to sleep. Real sleep. 

Dylan stood below the statue of the black pyramid, guns pointed at his back. “I’m giving myself up,” he repeated.

Emily Pope clutched her clipboard. “T-thank you for c-coming back. You’ll have to wait for J- the director.” 

“That’s too bad.” Dylan said the first thing that came to mind. “He’s dead.”

Emily struggled to compose herself. “Trench is dead. Jesse is the new director.” 

“The House chose her? The big chair stooped?” Half-remembered, dreamlike puppetry. The shadows of command like a crown of razors. He had known she was here by the piping of Polaris in his brain, but somehow he hadn’t thought she would be in charge. She was a prime candidate too, of course, but to walk right in and be crowned … 

Dylan started to let go. He didn’t want to think about the directorship. Part of him wanted to think about Jesse, to tell her … What had he wanted to tell her? The thunder song distorts you? Had that been it? 

Rangers showed themselves at his peripheral vision, creeping in with guns, letting him know they were there. Dylan sighed.  Emily seemed stunned, looking to the Rangers for a decision she alone could make. 

It would be so much easier not to do this. Suddenly exhausted, Dylan struggled to grasp both words and identity. “He has to tell her.” 

Has to tell her Polaris is using you. Anger stabbed in at himself. Polaris had abandoned him, and he wanted her to care, and he hated her. She hadn’t saved Dylan, so why would she save Jesse? He had to warn Jesse. He had to get revenge on Polaris. The distinction was meaningless. Self-interest and selflessness rolled up into one over-examined motive open on a lab table.

 It had gotten him out of his prison. That was what mattered. 

He had to tell her what he could to make sure she didn’t end up on either side of a cage.

 Burn the House down with us, sister. 

Emily regained her composure. Her voice was steadier than her gaze. She tapped the pen against the pad in nervous harmony. “I’ll allow you to stay here if you let us test you. You’re the only other person in this building who can resist the Hiss. That can help all of us.” 

“Typical Bureau.” He heard the noise — the Hiss, she called it? — buzz in his own voice. They’d put him back in a cell? He hated the idea but would endure it for the chance to tell Jesse what he knew. To set her free. “Fine.” Even as he said it, he started to drift back into the comfort of the sound. Better that than seeing himself let them escort him back. At least it isn’t Trench, that tyrant, and Casper, the traitor, looking at him. 

Still it was so inviting to leave, to ascend, to escape into the song and the sound, and so he bowed his head and tried against his own conflicted will to stay conscious as the rangers escorted him up the stairs, looking dully at the tables, the radios, the control point with a well of power he could sense dimly. His stomach rumbled. Last time he had been here, he had been a table high. 

If you could've furthered any plotline intro'd either before or during the BLUE arc, what would they be? I know what you think the BLUE plotline, (I personally give it a C+), but was there anything you think that could've been furthered elaborated on? I thought some ideas were better then others, but the execution was off. I blame Shueisha's poor business model. SnS could've gone 400+ chapters (along with some other titles)

If I could ask for an arc to be redone and overworked, it would be Central Arc tbqh. 

This might be a contentious point to have, as many fans regard Central Arc to be the point where Shokugeki began to crumble, as the sudden usage of actual villains instead of normal rivals was something that many considered not fitting for the tone Shokugeki held before Azami’s introduction. 

I do understand that criticism, but personally I do actually like Central Arc’s premise. Establishing an totalitarian regime and putting the protagonists in a position of struggling revolt is just an interesting conflict for me that also holds a lot of potential for intriguing clashes and compelling drama.

My problem is how it was executed and that the execution of the premise did not live up to the potential that said premise has imo.

Central vs. Rebels ultimately became very generic Good vs. Bad. For the most part we’ve just been told that Central is bad and has to be taken down, instead of being shown that it is. I mean, look at how Central was established: Members of the Elite 10 voted Azami into power. But who exactly were the members that voted for Azami? Eishi, Rindou, Somei, Momo, Nene and Eizan. The members who were against it? Megishima, Isshiki and Kuga. My point here is that, Isshiki is out of all the Elite 10 members the most familiar one to us (save for Erina) as he’s been introduced somewhere in the most earliest chapters. We know him and he is someone trustworthy to us. Then there’s Kuga, who got at least some insight during Moon Banquet Festival and while not overly familiar to us at that point, because he was still relatively fresh, he was still a lot more familiar to us than most of the characters we had on Central’s side. Somei, Momo and Nene had barely any characterization back then. They were pretty much strangers to us. Eishi and Rindou got a bit to do before Central’s establishment, but still had a mysterious aura to them. The truly most familiar to us who voted Central into power is Eizan, as he was also established a lot earlier. Eizan admittedly did not do all too much in the series at that point, but the things he did indeed do were not really the actions of a good guy. He threatened Soma and was also the one to orchestrate the whole Mimasaka-situation in the Autumn Elections, a situation that put one of the fan-favorites, Takumi, through strong suffering. So yeah, Eizan is not what you could call a sympathetic character. And that’s the point; the people against Central were the more familiar one to us who we come to trust, while the people who ultimately got Central into power were a bunch of mysterious strangers to us + the one guy who we’ve already come to know as jerk and antagonist. That all is just a very blatant way to establish Central as the “evil side” and to have the reader root for the rebels instantly, because that’s the characters we know and love, right?

Based on it’s premise, I always thought of Central as an ideology-war. However, that requires to actually explore the ideology and convince the reader that one ideology is better than the other. But what we got instead is that the people who are responsible for this arc happening in the first place (The Traitor Elites) barely ever actually talk about the ideology they supposedly stand behind. The individual reasoning for voting Azami into the position of headmaster was not really explored for most of the Elites, so it all never felt all too convincing to me. The major change we see Azami make on Totsuki is getting rid of clubs in such, but most of his reformation is also not really shown on us. (It’s an overall theme in Shokugeki that Tsukuda dismisses the show, don’t tell rule to be perfectly honest) Meanwhile the Rebels are presented to be 100% in the right, as if the old system of Totsuki truly was absolutely perfect. I would have liked an exploration on good and bad on BOTH sides. How the old system DID have flaws, how there’s possibly some good ideas in Central’s regime but their actions are overall terribly unjust or they take things to the extreme. It requires a lot of writing skills, I’ll admit that and I don’t think I’d be able to write such a thing….But Tsukuda is a guy who makes a living out of writing, if I am not mistaken. 

Maybe he should have actually make an detailed “Survivor’s Hunt”, instead of just showing us one battle and nothing else, to get a lot more substance and character into the Central-Regime than just “baddies, that’s all you need to know”. 

Central gets concluded through the Regiment de cuisine which is therefore still part of the overall Central storyline, despite being counted as its own arc, so that should be redone as well.

RDC is something I view as even more critical. 

I like Central’s premise as I said, but RDC’s premise is something I’ve always seen as rather problematic and here’s why: RDC’s end goal is to have the Elite 10 defeated and that’s kinda were I am already frowning. The thing is that the Elite 10 had more build up than anything else in this series and ever since Shokugeki started they’ve been made out to be the ultimate, competent GODS of their universe. And then just this arc has as end goal that said GODS will be defeated within just one arc by mostly first-years. 

So yeah, that was just a problem for me and as the rebels ultimately won, in the process only Eishi and Rindou got to look like actually competent while the rest felt a lot more like normal rivals which is a shame and disservice to the build-up that the Elite 10 received over the course of the entire series. I mean, not even the Elites on the Rebels side got to do stuff that would be justice for them: Kuga lost his only battle in it, Megishima (*cough* former third seat, that’s a high number) got a win against a character with little to none characterization but lost his next fight and Isshiki also just got one win against a newly-established character who was not even made out as very competent but also lost the follow-up fight. 

For me, there’s two ways to possibly fix RDC:

1. Arena 51 Raid, they can’t stop all of us: Don’t get rid of half of your cast for cheap tension and actually have a much huger mess face the Elites. The number of people participating in a Regiment de cuisine does not have to be equal, so do not make it equal just to add tension. Have more people on the rebels side, because that would have make a victory of the rebels over the Elites possibly a bit more realistic to me. DONT SHOW ME MIYOKO AND NAO IN THE AUDIENCE SMILING ABOUT THE REBELS APPROACHING VICTORY BECAUSE NOW I AM FORCED TO ASK WHY THEY WERENT APPROACHED BY SOMA TO PARTICIPATE IN THE RDC. The rebels should have recruited everyone they could get in their boat, it’s the Elite 10 they face off against for heaven’s sake. 

2. Lower the stakes and actually have Central win: Another problem with RDC are the ridiculous stakes for the rebels. Like damn, in case the Elites loose they loose their seats (which they can obtain again anyway, as presented to us by Nene and Eizan in 3rd year) and Central would have to dissolve. Which yeah, I guess, does kinda suck for them? But it’s not really something comparable to Erina and Jouichiro giving up their freedom as people to be in Azami’s clutches forever, plus Jouichiro closing the place that belongs to his wife’s family and all of the kids having to leave Totsuki forever. Given how immense the stakes were for the Rebels, it was pretty much inevitable that they’d win and therefore sucked out a lot of tension. So yeah, make the stakes something that does suck greatly (I mean, expulsion could still remain one I guess) but is not an ultimate destruction of an individual. And then, as I said, have Central actually being victorious in the Regiment de Cuisine, showcasing what actual monsters they are. What would follow up is the Rebels throughout 2nd year trying to win back the school, through other ways that could possibly interesting. Especially if they are possibly thrown off the school, but still don’t give up and seek their ways to make moves even from the outsides. 

MEEP

So yeah, I believe Central as well as RDC could have been done well and be interesting but ultimately were written very clumsily. I’d love to see a good rewrite of Central Arc. I’d to it myself, but I don’t consider myself skilled enough for it. However “Shokugeki no Kimiko” will have two arcs that very  strongly reflect what I would have wished for to be done with Central and RDC.

I hope that this ramble did make sense, although it was probably just insanely uncoordinated as always ; 7 ; And also me, not knowing how to word stuff properly. 

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Aside from that, if you are to ask me, if there’s any arc Post-RDC I’d like to see redone, I’d say the Beach Arc should be stretched out a little as I think it was much too short but actually a very fun idea.