I don't think the plot of Flip Flappers is any more confusing or out there than something like, say, Kill la Kill.
It's just that Flip Flappers is 1) half the episodes and 2) not interested at all in pausing for a single moment to explain anything, preferring to just kinda keep going and let the visuals do the talking.
It's a good show if you enjoy surreal animation + gay magical girls, and don't mind the occasional breakneck pace and plot whiplash.
I haven't been following for the past couple months, but man, late-game TPN is messing with some really spicy concepts which I honestly don't think the series has the right tone and structure to deal with then with as much nuance that it thinks its actually doing.
I'm really not sure how I'm suppose to feel about (Big Spoilers)
Sympathetically genocidal Norman
So I'm honestly not surprised at all that it's going to end way too cleanly.
FC: 1907-8030-1478
0
silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
the overall trajectory of TPN is kind of fascinating
you can just see the author's political philosophy constantly butting headfirst into shonen jump manga structure (i'm being specific here but really i think a lot of fiction formats would have the same issue), with extremely mixed results
i kind of love it, it's really good at just emotionally devastating me, but at this point i'm honestly a lot more interested in the creative team's next project, which i hope takes some lessons away from how things shook out
I don't think the plot of Flip Flappers is any more confusing or out there than something like, say, Kill la Kill.
It's just that Flip Flappers is 1) half the episodes and 2) not interested at all in pausing for a single moment to explain anything, preferring to just kinda keep going and let the visuals do the talking.
It's a good show if you enjoy surreal animation + gay magical girls, and don't mind the occasional breakneck pace and plot whiplash.
It's also just a matter of like what matters to the show
Does The Big Plot ever really get explained? Eh... Barely? There's this org and they're doing their weird dream dives and there's kinda more to it but it really just doesn't matter.
What matters is the relationship and development between our two main characters. That's what the show is actually about and what it cares about, and it's good at that. Like the text - especially in the first half or so - is pretty much just a framework to hang the subtext onto, with the subtext being a gay girl coming of age and trying to find self acceptance.
It's also assuming a degree of familiarity with its references. Like episode 5 is assuming a good knowledge of the yuri genre, its a major thematic statement. What exactly the jewel is that they end up looting at the end of the episode doesn't matter, because it's not meant to be read literally anyway. Why there's an evil tower trapping them doesn't matter in a literal sense, but it does matter in that it's a giant phallus policing their sexuality and killing anyone that tries to escape their yuri genre schoolgirl prison.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
my problem with princess connect is generic main character’s crippling amnesia isn’t humor to me at all? And more just really sad? “trying to get someone to not swallow the coins they’ve just been handed” isn’t as funny when you’ve worked with the intellectually disabled
My wife and I binged the Erased anime this weekend. I'd read the manga before, but she hadn't.
One cool thing they did in the anime...
(Actual plot spoilers)
Episode 10 ends with the main character seemingly dying, and then the OP for episode 11 was edited to completely remove him from it. I don't mean they removed the scenes he was in, they still showed all the same scenes he just wasn't there anymore.
Reversing the narrator voice for episode 11 was also a nice touch.
my problem with princess connect is generic main character’s crippling amnesia isn’t humor to me at all? And more just really sad? “trying to get someone to not swallow the coins they’ve just been handed” isn’t as funny when you’ve worked with the intellectually disabled
That's definitely a read on the joke that I hadn't considered and I appreciate you bringing it up.
Up to now I had thought of it like making fun of how in RPGs the blank slate silent protags is always just kinda present and given simple one or two word dialogue options, and yet every party member is constantly talking about how amazing they are, so the literal application was kind of clever. But from the angle of actual disability yeah it ain't great at all. There's gotta be a way they could've still had him be bland and boring and maybe even needing the world explained to him without resorting to jokes like the one you brought up.
Now that I'm thinking about it, didn't the Persona 4 anime do something similar? Where Yu went from the kind of blank slate to being cool as hell as the show went on and his social skills ranked up? Maybe that's a better application of the same joke.
yeah the P4 anime did that
in the start of the P4 The Golden anime it was treated like NG+ with all his social stats and persona levels maxed at the start
any narrative designer who writes RPG joke dialogue that is that insensitive of folks with intellectual disabilities gets paid way more than they should
I never read it as making fun of intellectual disabilities so much as just "this character is comically out of his depth", but, uh, yeah, thinking about it again that is pretty sketch.
And since the main appeal of the show is just watching Karyl make ridiculous faces I could definitely due without those kind of jokes.
I'd be surprised if it was intentionally making fun of them, but it's definitely pretty insensitive in how it was written.
There's better ways to write a character with amnesia, and many of those ways can include comedy too! But having a character just try and eat coins and do other things that people with genuine amnesia don't really do is just lazy hack writing and it makes the artform worse just by existing imo
I never got the impression that the main character of Princess Connect is the way he is because of amnesia. He's the way he is because that's the way that EVERY goddamned protagonist of these kinds of shows and games are, and they're just not bothering to give him any more lines or involvement in things than the one or two token meaningless random dialogue interjections that RPGs are full of. Like I wouldn't be shocked at all if most of the script was verbatim lifted from the game it's based on. The Persona comparison is apt. Yu didn't spend every episode and scene staring blankly into space as a comment on mental illnesses or autism, but because the script adapters were really, really lazy and/or scared of giving him some kind of personality/lines that didn't exist in the original game.
0
Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
Damn, Ascendance of a Bookworm is going to some dark places.
@Janson and I are watching the Diamond Is Unbreakable live-action movie
Honestly, it’s not too bad! They’ve done a decent job of adapting it.
I had to look up and see if Keicho’s hair was as ridiculous in the anime, and it looks like it got toned down a little bit for the live action, but not by much.
Calling what the MC has amnesia isn't accurate. That would be implying some kind of condition. His memories are being witheld from him. That is made clear in the start.
The entire scene where he tries to eat the coin is pretty well written. A lady is making fun of Kokkoro as being his girlfriend after she denies being his sister. He's hungry and trying to get food. She just hands him the coin without telling him anything so he tries to eat it.
If you are a hungry child and your mom hands you something you'd stick it in your mouth. That's what kids do. She even responds like he's a child after. Even getting him to spit it into her hands.
It's a joke defining their relationship, not as lovers or even as master and servant like Kokkoro claims, but as a mom looking after her clueless child.
the overall trajectory of TPN is kind of fascinating
you can just see the author's political philosophy constantly butting headfirst into shonen jump manga structure (i'm being specific here but really i think a lot of fiction formats would have the same issue), with extremely mixed results
i kind of love it, it's really good at just emotionally devastating me, but at this point i'm honestly a lot more interested in the creative team's next project, which i hope takes some lessons away from how things shook out
TPN is borderline fascinating in that so many of its problems could have been solved by showing MORE.
SHOW Emma running around and meeting demon children and they're not awful people and she's getting conflicted.
SHOW Norman having to live in a horror show by himself and try to make his way and having to make moral compromises.
SHOW the noble families before the point when they're all going to die.
The through line was there, they just didn't bother to SHOW any of it, they
timeskipped and handwaved
.
I'm at the point where I'm actively hoping the anime has filler to show the gaps.
Just finished the second Code Geass movie. Man, these things are so baffling.
On the positive side, nearly all the scenes set at school and nearly all the objectification of the female characters is removed. The character of Mao is completely excised, and Shirley doesn't get fridged.
On the negative side, a lot of pivotal battles and scenes from season one are glossed over, the first half of season two is covered at such a breakneck pace that many major events occur off-screen (including Lelouch getting his memories back and dropping a building on Viceroy Calares), Euphemia and Rolo get almost no build-up or character development, and Shirley doesn't really do much of anything at all.
I'm not sure who these movies are even for. Hypothetically the shorter runtime and lack of time wasting "anime bullshit" (high school scenes, fan service, etc) would be better for new viewers, but the section covering the first half of season two especially glosses over things so quickly that only someone who has seen the show before would have no idea what's going on.
I think my "favorite" change so far involves Nina and Euphemia's relationship. In the original series the two of them are part of a group of hostages at a hotel detained by a Japanese liberation group, with Euphemia drawing attention to herself to hopefully save everyone else. In the movies these events never happen; instead, Euphemia just presented Nina an award for academic achievement or something.
It's only a twist in that everyone expected some horrible price like Emma dying, and nope, everyone is fine.
Nothing since the first arc has captured the terror of the beginning.
Yeah, this ending is just bunk, if you ask me, at least based on the most recent chapter.
There's been an awful lot of "this Very Bad Character gets redeemed" as we go along, which has got pretty tiring after a while, but cancelling out what was expected to be some sort of Very Bad Event that we've had hanging over us for a long time by just saying "ah, whatever, never mind" really feels like cheating more than it ought to.
And, yeah, it started off So Good, but other than the Goldy Pond arc, everything else outside Grace Field has felt like a bit of a let-down, and all the new bits of world / characters just seem to dilute the original things that I liked about the story.
I know I've been complaining about these movies, but I just got to one of my favorite exchanges in Code Geass:
Suzaku: "You could have tried to work within the system!"
Kallen: "And what about the people who can't get into the system?! How are we supposed to tell people it's wrong?!"
Suzaku: "You!"
Kallen: "Don't you dare look down on others, you egotistical punk!"
Yeah, while Suzaku and Lelouch both have their own selfish reasons for doing what they do it's Kallen who is the actual hero character of Code Geass because she fights for the people.
Yeah, while Suzaku and Lelouch both have their own selfish reasons for doing what they do it's Kallen who is the actual hero character of Code Geass because she fights for the people.
lelouch's actions and thought process break down to even a second of scrutiny
it's played as some 200iq 4D chess God Emperor of Dune without understanding what Leto II was about and also he could fucking control peoples actions
and instead of controlling the royal family to not be shits, or launching a coup and being a good king(or just abolishing the monarchy himself), he becomes a tyrant after creating a civil war to... help people and create a stable state without injustice??????
I started the Code Geass sequel movie and it's immediately very weird. So far, at least, the stakes are way lower and it's a random grab bag of characters (Kallen, C.C., Sayoko, and Lloyd) on a secret mission to save Nunnally and Suzaku. Also, Shirley is confirmed to still be alive, but so far hasn't even appeared on-screen.
Unless something major happens I'm happy to enjoy the movie for what it is and consider it non-canon to the original series.
Yeah, while Suzaku and Lelouch both have their own selfish reasons for doing what they do it's Kallen who is the actual hero character of Code Geass because she fights for the people.
lelouch's actions and thought process break down to even a second of scrutiny
it's played as some 200iq 4D chess God Emperor of Dune without understanding what Leto II was about and also he could fucking control peoples actions
and instead of controlling the royal family to not be shits, or launching a coup and being a good king(or just abolishing the monarchy himself), he becomes a tyrant after creating a civil war to... help people and create a stable state without injustice??????
just
what
His end goal was to become so monstrous by conquering the world that all of humanity would be united against him so that when "Zero" struck him down and backed Nunally as the global ruler people would accept it and she'd be able to rule justly without having shed the blood to get that power in the first place.
It's not a half-bad goal I think, but the problem with it is that it has no longevity. Nunally might be a good ruler, but what of the next person on that throne? Or the person after them? The whole grand scheme only works briefly. Granted there's ways to make it so Nunally never leaves the throne, giving her a Code to make her immortal being the chief one, but that just leads to an array of different problems as the world inevitably diverges from her beliefs and biases while she remains the same for eternity.
Yeah, while Suzaku and Lelouch both have their own selfish reasons for doing what they do it's Kallen who is the actual hero character of Code Geass because she fights for the people.
lelouch's actions and thought process break down to even a second of scrutiny
it's played as some 200iq 4D chess God Emperor of Dune without understanding what Leto II was about and also he could fucking control peoples actions
and instead of controlling the royal family to not be shits, or launching a coup and being a good king(or just abolishing the monarchy himself), he becomes a tyrant after creating a civil war to... help people and create a stable state without injustice??????
just
what
His end goal was to become so monstrous by conquering the world that all of humanity would be united against him so that when "Zero" struck him down and backed Nunally as the global ruler people would accept it and she'd be able to rule justly without having shed the blood to get that power in the first place.
It's not a half-bad goal I think, but the problem with it is that it has no longevity. Nunally might be a good ruler, but what of the next person on that throne? Or the person after them? The whole grand scheme only works briefly. Granted there's ways to make it so Nunally never leaves the throne, giving her a Code to make her immortal being the chief one, but that just leads to an array of different problems as the world inevitably diverges from her beliefs and biases while she remains the same for eternity.
Actually, looking at the Code Geass wiki:
Nunnally remains as a figurehead in the recently downgraded Principality of Britannia, guarded and assisted by the new Zero. However, as people who have used the F.L.E.I.J.A. in the past must not be involved in politics, she has no actual power and cannot decide on government matters. The nation is instead lead by Prince Schneizel, who is still under Lelouch's Geass to serve "Zero", and a group of remaining Britannian nobles, so she can only propose changes to the Britannian parliament.
So she's not even in charge of Brittania, much less the world. Lelouch's actions mainly amounted to reducing Brittania's power and influence and preventing Charles and Schneizel's plans.
Personally I think I mostly like Code Geass for the central conceit, setting, characters, and ideological conflicts. The execution leaves much to be desired.
That said, I think Lelouch's actions make more sense in-character if you understand that he's very emotional and illogical despite his intellect.
Prime example:
He had the power to compel perpetual obedience from anyone. He knew this because one of his first uses of his power was to compel a girl to make a tally mark on a specific wall once per day. However, he had his own code of ethics that forbade him from using anything more than limited-time commands that would also grant the victims future immunity to his powers.
For the most part, at least.
Even Lelouch's own voice actor pointed out in an interview that Lelouch could have hypothetically used his powers in a more effective and peaceful manner, but that Lelouch had other competing ideals and motivations.
Posts
It's just that Flip Flappers is 1) half the episodes and 2) not interested at all in pausing for a single moment to explain anything, preferring to just kinda keep going and let the visuals do the talking.
It's a good show if you enjoy surreal animation + gay magical girls, and don't mind the occasional breakneck pace and plot whiplash.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Oof, that last line hits too close to home.
watch Mononoke!
it's all on youtube
I haven't been following for the past couple months, but man, late-game TPN is messing with some really spicy concepts which I honestly don't think the series has the right tone and structure to deal with then with as much nuance that it thinks its actually doing.
I'm really not sure how I'm suppose to feel about (Big Spoilers)
So I'm honestly not surprised at all that it's going to end way too cleanly.
Nothing since the first arc has captured the terror of the beginning.
you can just see the author's political philosophy constantly butting headfirst into shonen jump manga structure (i'm being specific here but really i think a lot of fiction formats would have the same issue), with extremely mixed results
i kind of love it, it's really good at just emotionally devastating me, but at this point i'm honestly a lot more interested in the creative team's next project, which i hope takes some lessons away from how things shook out
It's also just a matter of like what matters to the show
Does The Big Plot ever really get explained? Eh... Barely? There's this org and they're doing their weird dream dives and there's kinda more to it but it really just doesn't matter.
What matters is the relationship and development between our two main characters. That's what the show is actually about and what it cares about, and it's good at that. Like the text - especially in the first half or so - is pretty much just a framework to hang the subtext onto, with the subtext being a gay girl coming of age and trying to find self acceptance.
It's also assuming a degree of familiarity with its references. Like episode 5 is assuming a good knowledge of the yuri genre, its a major thematic statement. What exactly the jewel is that they end up looting at the end of the episode doesn't matter, because it's not meant to be read literally anyway. Why there's an evil tower trapping them doesn't matter in a literal sense, but it does matter in that it's a giant phallus policing their sexuality and killing anyone that tries to escape their yuri genre schoolgirl prison.
Pecorine deserves better then being lumped together with [insert player name]
One cool thing they did in the anime...
(Actual plot spoilers)
Reversing the narrator voice for episode 11 was also a nice touch.
That's definitely a read on the joke that I hadn't considered and I appreciate you bringing it up.
Up to now I had thought of it like making fun of how in RPGs the blank slate silent protags is always just kinda present and given simple one or two word dialogue options, and yet every party member is constantly talking about how amazing they are, so the literal application was kind of clever. But from the angle of actual disability yeah it ain't great at all. There's gotta be a way they could've still had him be bland and boring and maybe even needing the world explained to him without resorting to jokes like the one you brought up.
Now that I'm thinking about it, didn't the Persona 4 anime do something similar? Where Yu went from the kind of blank slate to being cool as hell as the show went on and his social skills ranked up? Maybe that's a better application of the same joke.
in the start of the P4 The Golden anime it was treated like NG+ with all his social stats and persona levels maxed at the start
And since the main appeal of the show is just watching Karyl make ridiculous faces I could definitely due without those kind of jokes.
There's better ways to write a character with amnesia, and many of those ways can include comedy too! But having a character just try and eat coins and do other things that people with genuine amnesia don't really do is just lazy hack writing and it makes the artform worse just by existing imo
Well a weird city state society run by a monarchy and a church is not gonna be a fun place to live for women
Honestly, it’s not too bad! They’ve done a decent job of adapting it.
I had to look up and see if Keicho’s hair was as ridiculous in the anime, and it looks like it got toned down a little bit for the live action, but not by much.
The entire scene where he tries to eat the coin is pretty well written. A lady is making fun of Kokkoro as being his girlfriend after she denies being his sister. He's hungry and trying to get food. She just hands him the coin without telling him anything so he tries to eat it.
If you are a hungry child and your mom hands you something you'd stick it in your mouth. That's what kids do. She even responds like he's a child after. Even getting him to spit it into her hands.
It's a joke defining their relationship, not as lovers or even as master and servant like Kokkoro claims, but as a mom looking after her clueless child.
It's not some complex slight.
TPN is borderline fascinating in that so many of its problems could have been solved by showing MORE.
SHOW Norman having to live in a horror show by himself and try to make his way and having to make moral compromises.
SHOW the noble families before the point when they're all going to die.
The through line was there, they just didn't bother to SHOW any of it, they
I'm at the point where I'm actively hoping the anime has filler to show the gaps.
On the positive side, nearly all the scenes set at school and nearly all the objectification of the female characters is removed. The character of Mao is completely excised, and Shirley doesn't get fridged.
On the negative side, a lot of pivotal battles and scenes from season one are glossed over, the first half of season two is covered at such a breakneck pace that many major events occur off-screen (including Lelouch getting his memories back and dropping a building on Viceroy Calares), Euphemia and Rolo get almost no build-up or character development, and Shirley doesn't really do much of anything at all.
I'm not sure who these movies are even for. Hypothetically the shorter runtime and lack of time wasting "anime bullshit" (high school scenes, fan service, etc) would be better for new viewers, but the section covering the first half of season two especially glosses over things so quickly that only someone who has seen the show before would have no idea what's going on.
I think my "favorite" change so far involves Nina and Euphemia's relationship. In the original series the two of them are part of a group of hostages at a hotel detained by a Japanese liberation group, with Euphemia drawing attention to herself to hopefully save everyone else. In the movies these events never happen; instead, Euphemia just presented Nina an award for academic achievement or something.
Yeah, this ending is just bunk, if you ask me, at least based on the most recent chapter.
And, yeah, it started off So Good, but other than the Goldy Pond arc, everything else outside Grace Field has felt like a bit of a let-down, and all the new bits of world / characters just seem to dilute the original things that I liked about the story.
Suzaku: "You could have tried to work within the system!"
Kallen: "And what about the people who can't get into the system?! How are we supposed to tell people it's wrong?!"
Suzaku: "You!"
Kallen: "Don't you dare look down on others, you egotistical punk!"
They needed to be some unknowable hp Lovecraft shit.
lelouch's actions and thought process break down to even a second of scrutiny
and instead of controlling the royal family to not be shits, or launching a coup and being a good king(or just abolishing the monarchy himself), he becomes a tyrant after creating a civil war to... help people and create a stable state without injustice??????
just
what
Unless something major happens I'm happy to enjoy the movie for what it is and consider it non-canon to the original series.
It's not a half-bad goal I think, but the problem with it is that it has no longevity. Nunally might be a good ruler, but what of the next person on that throne? Or the person after them? The whole grand scheme only works briefly. Granted there's ways to make it so Nunally never leaves the throne, giving her a Code to make her immortal being the chief one, but that just leads to an array of different problems as the world inevitably diverges from her beliefs and biases while she remains the same for eternity.
Actually, looking at the Code Geass wiki:
So she's not even in charge of Brittania, much less the world. Lelouch's actions mainly amounted to reducing Brittania's power and influence and preventing Charles and Schneizel's plans.
Personally I think I mostly like Code Geass for the central conceit, setting, characters, and ideological conflicts. The execution leaves much to be desired.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Prime example:
For the most part, at least.
Even Lelouch's own voice actor pointed out in an interview that Lelouch could have hypothetically used his powers in a more effective and peaceful manner, but that Lelouch had other competing ideals and motivations.