Another episode! I know, it’s crazy – actually timely updates on this wild ride. Last week started off with a nice bit of slice of life before being derailed entirely by a nonsensical Cute Thing, which is a new and interesting method of SAO self-sabotage. Having Kirito and Asuna adopt a child-minded girl they found in the woods certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice, but hey, I guess we’re rolling with it. We have graduated from a series of unlinked vignettes to… a series of incoherent narrative twists. This is progress.
Author Archives: Bobduh
Sword Art Online – Episode 11
Alright, I can do this. I can do this. It’s just a stupid cartoon, it can’t hurt me. I gotta keep this together – can’t already be losing faith, I’m not even halfway done yet. If I have to retreat into sarcasm already, I’ll never make it to the end.
OKAY. Hey everybody, time for another episode of Sword Art Online. Last episode was basically the absolute worst, and I’ve been told it actually gets worse from here, and I don’t really know how to process that information. That’s fine! I sincerely hope “cackling villain torture-porn” is just a thing the show decided to do that one time, and that now we’ll put that stuff behind us and get on to some reasonably peaceful slice of digital life. In the last post, I basically kept being astonished by how little the characters seemed affected by the absolute madness of the central scene – but at this point, I’d actually be perfectly happy to do what they’re doing, and pretend none of that ever happened. And if that’s how we’re playing this, then we could be getting something very rare and very appreciated here – a slice of life romance thing where the characters have actually already admitted their feelings for each other.
That by itself isn’t actually worth much, granted. For stuff like this to be meaningful, the writing has to be there as well, and this is Sword Art Online we’re talking about. But still, this show is always at its best in the little moments, and it seems like we’re about to enter a sort of “calm before the storm” phase, and that could actually turn out okay.
I have to hope, goddamnit. Hope is all I’ve got left.
Alright, let’s get to this.
New Podcast – Spring 2014 Mid-Season Discussion
Yep, I was on another podcast this week, discussing season impressions with a bunch of other bloggers. I gush about Ping Pong, we argue about Sidonia and Titan, and basically everybody takes a few cheap shots at Mahouka. You can check out the whole thing over at Deadlight’s blog, which includes time stamps for specific show discussions and links to everybody else’s blogs. And if you enjoy the podcasts, it turns out I’m actually going to be a regular on these ones from now on, so, uh, lucky you!
Once again, here’s the link to the podcast. I don’t have anything else to say, so here’s Star Platinum punching a shark.
Sword Art Online – Episode 10
Holy shit it’s Sword Art Online. This episode promises to be terrible, what with it literally starting with Kirito fighting to earn Asuna the right to take a vacation from a guild that she is the goddamn vice-commander of holy shit I can’t believe I even typed that goddamnit Sword Art Online. That’s cool though, because once we get through Kirito saving the day, we might actually emerge into some normal banter between the two of them.
I’ve very often complained about this show never getting around to exploring its central conflict, but last episode proved that might actually be for the best. Sword Art Online’s biggest problem remains Kirito, and Kirito is always at his worst when the show presents an actual conflict. When it’s just adventuring or slice of life, he can interact with other people normally – but when there’s a dragon to slay, suddenly everyone else is useless, and Big Man Kirito takes the stage. It’s the show at its most transparently pandering, and as someone who’s not really getting his rocks off on how awesome Kirito is, it has me checking my watch basically every time it happens. Even this might be forgivable if those action scenes were good, but last episode’s climactic fight just wasn’t particularly well-designed, either. I enjoyed it because it was very silly, but it was not a quality piece of entertainment.
That’s cool though, because if actions scenes tend to demonstrate this show at its worst, then the non-action Kirito-Asuna scenes are clearly the show at its best. Asuna’s actually a reasonable character, and Kirito can interact more or less like a normal person when he’s not required to be Captain Hero. If Building a Better SAO requires kind of ignoring the actual plot, then so be it. Let’s get through this dickwaving contest and on to some much-earned vacation time.
Spring 2014 – Week 8 in Review
It’s so nice to only be watching good shows. I think One Week Friends kinda stumbled this week, but other than that, I don’t really have any complaints about anything. I should drop shows more often!
Ping Pong – Episode 7
It’s a testament to how much Ping Pong respects its characters that the person who would occupy the “villain” role in a traditional narrative is here simply the most tragic member of a selection of co-protagonists. Kazama is an unhappy boy, and this episode was largely dedicated to defining and exploring that unhappiness.
Shiki and the Setting Sun
I’m kind of tired of vampires, you guys.
At this point, they seem just generally kind of played out. They suck blood, they sometimes turn into bats, they originally meant “fear of feminine sexuality” and now mean “sexy danger.” Sexy danger is pretty cool I guess, but if you keep using vampires to be dangerously sexy, eventually the spark fades. The current wave of trashy vampire romances certainly hasn’t helped, but vampires have always had a ceiling on their resonance as long as they stuck to the old model of what vampires really are.
Fortunately, Shiki thinks vampires are something very different.
Spring 2014 – Week 7 in Review
Some strong episodes and some weak ones this week, but fortunately the shows that could really be damaged by a weak link (Ping Pong, One Week Friends) came out swinging. Running them down…
Ping Pong – Episode 6
“Heroes don’t exist. What exists is reality, and the fact that only those who can adapt to reality win.”
There’s a kind of fatalism to Ping Pong, something that separates it from a lot anime out there. Some of its characters aren’t very good, or have damaging weaknesses. Because of this, they fail. There’s no “I’ve got to give it my all anyway” here. There’s no “genius of hard work.” Yeah, you do have to work hard – everybody has to work hard. But sometimes working hard doesn’t mean chasing any dream you choose.
Character Design 101: Want and Need
Management: Vague character-arc spoilers for a few shows here – FLCL, Eva, Tatami Galaxy, Cowboy Bebop, Hyouka. Hyouka’s the only one I get particularly specific on.
Gonna share something a little different today! Recently I’ve been thinking about characters, which is probably because I am always thinking about characters. While a lot of my personal views on character writing have obviously come from reading and watching a whole lot of stories, a fair amount of my understanding has also come from writing characters. As a fiction writer, knowing how to write a fleshed-out human being is rarely optional – but even just as someone who just wants to poke more deeply at the things they consume, I think analyzing characters from a character-creation standpoint can be very enlightening. Characters are kind of like trees – though the individual branches of their actions may look strange and circuitous, generally everything winds its way back to the central trunk of their base nature and desires. And looking at characters trunk-first can do a whole lot of work to make sense of their wildly winding limbs.
So let’s get down to that trunk, to the absolute base nature of a character. There are a few ways to approach this, but personally I think the easiest way to consider character writing is to start with two key variables. The two often-conflicting desires that tend to define their choices, their conflicts, and their ultimate resolution: what they want and what they need.