Having problems registering on Coin Return? Please email support@coin-return.org, and include your PA username and PIN.
For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to join us.
For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to join us.
For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to join us.
For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to join us.

Join us in the [Anime] thread to end all [Anime] threads

1109410951097109911001243

Posts

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Kyougu wrote: »
    I'm not sure how I feel about the heart MHA manga developments.
    Not a huge fan of "it was me all along, I orchestrated everything!" But i do like the idea of All For One taking his quirk to replace it with Decay.

    Also Midora is in rough shape

    Im good with it given the wat it’s the perfect dark mirror of
    One For All: a series of heroes each find a worthy successor to pass everything down to to carry on a legacy.

    AfO instead hangs onto his own original existence for like, what, two hundred years, then when he can’t do that any more sets out to deliberately create a vessel to pour himself into, literally stripping away everything that was theirs (the love of their family, their inborn traits) and replacing them with nothing but misery (a quirk that can only destroy, stripped of its ability to restore, the constant abuse and neglect) to break them enough that they’ll won’t stand up any longer when it comes time to take over the body.

    AfO is a rotten piece of shit.
    Nah, it's a shitty asspull of a twist for the reasons Red laid out in her video about the Magnificent Bastard trope - it undercuts both AfO and the other characters arcs to let him be the eleventh hour boss and to have him be the mastermind behind everything. Because, frankly, it was a lot better that AfO's scheming in the end finally was his undoing as all his plans unraveled because he wasn't the chessmaster he thought he was, and making the final fight about Midorya taking the hard road to save Shigaraki was the proper conclusion to his arc.

    This is just so fucking unsatisfying.
    But I mean he is the mastermind behind everything. The manga has not been shy about this, he has literally masterminded everything.

    Even his 11th Hour Boss nature of it isn’t 11th hour, because the entire deal for the past, what, two, three years worth of chapters has been “All For One is making Shigaraki his vessel, literally copying his consciousness over into him and effectively existing in two places at once as a weird hybrid of the two (until suppressed by Shigaraki’s pure rage and hate) and his original self in his original body”

    I can get folks not being happy with where the manga is at right now, but it’s not exactly a roadmap that’s been hidden.
    Two points:

    One, we actually had a pretty good roadmap! We had AfO get hoist on his own petard, as his shortcomings and weaknesses finally caused his plans to fail, which is a good way to conclude his arc - the fact that he was incapable of treating people with respect becoming the core of his downfall. And then we have the fight between Midorya and Shigaraki, where the win condition for the former isn't just stopping the latter, but saving him. These are both good arcs, with some really cool character resolutions!

    And they threw it away for a shitty plot twist that is as trite as it is telegraphed.

    Two, the whole "I manipulated everything!" spin actually weakens chessmaster/magnificent bastard/charismaniac type characters by basically basically handing them the "I WIN" button to get out of any jam. What makes good chessmasters - what makes them compelling - is when they're able to roll with the punches and make the unexpected work for them. With this, AfO just becomes another author's pet antagonist.

    Just because we knew the asspull was coming doesn't make it any less an asspull.
    You do get that he's pontificating, right? The reveal here is that he manipulated Shigaraki from even earlier than was shown (by removing the part of the quirk that could help him and leave him a quirk that could only cause tragedy). Him saying "YOU HAVE NO FREE WILL EVERYTHING IS AS I DESIGNED" is megalomania. Shigaraki has made plenty of decisions on his own, as evident by the fact that his rage made AfO lose control of Shigaraki's body as they fought for control in the psyche.

    There is a difference between a villain making a claim and a villain speaking for the author. The villain here is just going into full megalomania mode and trying to break Shigaraki down to nothing so he can take complete control.

    Also
    not just removing the restorative part of the quirk, but by removing Shigaraki’s own original, unrevealed quirk and substituting it with the remade, destructive one they cultivated from their quirk laboratory once he’d been abused enough by his father and neglected by the rest of his family to break him fully and lash out with it

    It’s a bit more convoluted on the face, but it at the same time:
    reinforces the core thematic elements at play; remember that while the conceit of MHA was “hero high school,” the actual pitch of the story, delivered by Deku’s first chapter narration, is how he became The Greatest Hero. For that, we have AFO as The Greatest Villain, someone from what we’ve seen is so utterly irredeemable he absolutely fits the mold in a way that Shigaraki, with the way we know he’s born from trauma (and even if it’s manufactured by AFO, it doesn’t change that it still happened).

    It also fits in with AFO’s modus operandi, not as a chess master but as someone who sees people not as people but specimens and puppets. His entire empire was building an underground genetic experimentation system to augment his personal quirk retinue while being able to take, warp and grant quirks to his underlings to accomplish his goals. Creating the grandson of one of his rivals into not simply a lab rat, but to serve as his new vessel fits well within that as a crowning triumph of his narcissistic and sociopathic ideology.

    It also again works well to highlight thematic mirroring between AFO the person and the bearers of OFA, as I mentioned before: the bearers of One For All all seek out a worthy successor who will carry their will onward into the future, at cost to themselves (as the act of passing it on deprives them of it and thus weakens them), while AFO selfishly seeks out ways to steal from others to empower himself, culminating now in not simply hijacking a kid’s life to steal as his new self but to go so far as to deliberately engineer that child’s existence for the sole purpose of being harvested as a vessel. One for All is thematically about empowering others, while All for One is about stealing from them to empower oneself.

    Shigaraki vanquishing AFO through his rage, hate and spite can work on as a character beat, but thematically it’s horrifying. That entire moment if it stands says all that hate and pain destructive impulses are a source of power and strength.

    But by doing it this way, what Horikoshi communicates is that, sure, maybe you can get by with that in the short term. But it doesn’t solve the problem, doesn’t make them go away. Shigaraki pushes AFO down into the depths of his soul, but don’t forget that is where he was just some days before. And now the thing holding him up is this fragile, self-destructive impulse that can’t help but eventually burn out and hollow himself out with it.

    Hence, when something is done to shatter it before it can burn itself out, AFO can resume control again. Which means you need something stronger, more self-sustaining, to solve him and everything that he represents. All the pain, all the manipulation, all the rage and hate and selfishness.

    And, because it’s a Shonen manga the answer is going to be the bonds of companionship between people, pulling each other up and pushing back against something together.

    The answer isn’t a rage that is so strong it would destroy the world itself. It’s finding a way to let the rage and pain go, to stop it from literally holding you in its grasp (hand symbolism!) and receive the help and support of others.

    Anzekay on
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Why do you need me to watch a video essay to make your point? Can't you just like, make your point?

    Well, I think Red does a good job explaining the problem personally, but here's the point - we had a resolution to this plot get unresolved, and there seems to be no real rhyme or reason for it.
    Because the thing about all these prior plot points is that the previous arc that just got undone actually resolved them! And, at least in my opinion, it did so in a much better way - yes, AfO had all these plans in motion, but because he needed to have complete control and is incapable of seeing others as anything but pawns for his own desires, he winds up undercutting his plans in the end, leading to his downfall. So the argument that this had been telegraphed I find weak, because all that foreshadowing has been resolved, and thus to do this means you have to unresolve them - that is, to toss away the work already done with the previous arc.

    Anzekay on
    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited April 14
    Berserk 1997 sure does go full Devilman near the end, eh?

    Anzekay on
    z48g7weaopj2.png
  • NaphtaliNaphtali Hazy + Flow SeaRegistered User regular
    edited April 14
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    Berserk 1997 sure does go full Devilman near the end, eh?

    oh my

    your first time with the eclipse?

    Anzekay on
    Steam | Nintendo ID: Naphtali | Wish List
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited April 14
    Naphtali wrote: »
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    Berserk 1997 sure does go full Devilman near the end, eh?

    oh my

    your first time with the eclipse?

    Yep, totally blind.

    Anzekay on
    z48g7weaopj2.png
  • AbacusAbacus Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    That entire thing is awful and all, but I'm more concerned about the bit where teachers fighting against sending kids back to school during COVID being a) A bad thing and b) For the benefit of the teachers.

    I'm not the only one looking at that bit of unhinged lunacy, right? Because Jesus.

    Anzekay on
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Kyougu wrote: »
    I'm not sure how I feel about the heart MHA manga developments.
    Not a huge fan of "it was me all along, I orchestrated everything!" But i do like the idea of All For One taking his quirk to replace it with Decay.

    Also Midora is in rough shape

    Im good with it given the wat it’s the perfect dark mirror of
    One For All: a series of heroes each find a worthy successor to pass everything down to to carry on a legacy.

    AfO instead hangs onto his own original existence for like, what, two hundred years, then when he can’t do that any more sets out to deliberately create a vessel to pour himself into, literally stripping away everything that was theirs (the love of their family, their inborn traits) and replacing them with nothing but misery (a quirk that can only destroy, stripped of its ability to restore, the constant abuse and neglect) to break them enough that they’ll won’t stand up any longer when it comes time to take over the body.

    AfO is a rotten piece of shit.
    Nah, it's a shitty asspull of a twist for the reasons Red laid out in her video about the Magnificent Bastard trope - it undercuts both AfO and the other characters arcs to let him be the eleventh hour boss and to have him be the mastermind behind everything. Because, frankly, it was a lot better that AfO's scheming in the end finally was his undoing as all his plans unraveled because he wasn't the chessmaster he thought he was, and making the final fight about Midorya taking the hard road to save Shigaraki was the proper conclusion to his arc.

    This is just so fucking unsatisfying.
    But I mean he is the mastermind behind everything. The manga has not been shy about this, he has literally masterminded everything.

    Even his 11th Hour Boss nature of it isn’t 11th hour, because the entire deal for the past, what, two, three years worth of chapters has been “All For One is making Shigaraki his vessel, literally copying his consciousness over into him and effectively existing in two places at once as a weird hybrid of the two (until suppressed by Shigaraki’s pure rage and hate) and his original self in his original body”

    I can get folks not being happy with where the manga is at right now, but it’s not exactly a roadmap that’s been hidden.
    Two points:

    One, we actually had a pretty good roadmap! We had AfO get hoist on his own petard, as his shortcomings and weaknesses finally caused his plans to fail, which is a good way to conclude his arc - the fact that he was incapable of treating people with respect becoming the core of his downfall. And then we have the fight between Midorya and Shigaraki, where the win condition for the former isn't just stopping the latter, but saving him. These are both good arcs, with some really cool character resolutions!

    And they threw it away for a shitty plot twist that is as trite as it is telegraphed.

    Two, the whole "I manipulated everything!" spin actually weakens chessmaster/magnificent bastard/charismaniac type characters by basically basically handing them the "I WIN" button to get out of any jam. What makes good chessmasters - what makes them compelling - is when they're able to roll with the punches and make the unexpected work for them. With this, AfO just becomes another author's pet antagonist.

    Just because we knew the asspull was coming doesn't make it any less an asspull.
    You do get that he's pontificating, right? The reveal here is that he manipulated Shigaraki from even earlier than was shown (by removing the part of the quirk that could help him and leave him a quirk that could only cause tragedy). Him saying "YOU HAVE NO FREE WILL EVERYTHING IS AS I DESIGNED" is megalomania. Shigaraki has made plenty of decisions on his own, as evident by the fact that his rage made AfO lose control of Shigaraki's body as they fought for control in the psyche.

    There is a difference between a villain making a claim and a villain speaking for the author. The villain here is just going into full megalomania mode and trying to break Shigaraki down to nothing so he can take complete control.

    Also
    not just removing the restorative part of the quirk, but by removing Shigaraki’s own original, unrevealed quirk and substituting it with the remade, destructive one they cultivated from their quirk laboratory once he’d been abused enough by his father and neglected by the rest of his family to break him fully and lash out with it

    It’s a bit more convoluted on the face, but it at the same time:
    reinforces the core thematic elements at play; remember that while the conceit of MHA was “hero high school,” the actual pitch of the story, delivered by Deku’s first chapter narration, is how he became The Greatest Hero. For that, we have AFO as The Greatest Villain, someone from what we’ve seen is so utterly irredeemable he absolutely fits the mold in a way that Shigaraki, with the way we know he’s born from trauma (and even if it’s manufactured by AFO, it doesn’t change that it still happened).

    It also fits in with AFO’s modus operandi, not as a chess master but as someone who sees people not as people but specimens and puppets. His entire empire was building an underground genetic experimentation system to augment his personal quirk retinue while being able to take, warp and grant quirks to his underlings to accomplish his goals. Creating the grandson of one of his rivals into not simply a lab rat, but to serve as his new vessel fits well within that as a crowning triumph of his narcissistic and sociopathic ideology.

    It also again works well to highlight thematic mirroring between AFO the person and the bearers of OFA, as I mentioned before: the bearers of One For All all seek out a worthy successor who will carry their will onward into the future, at cost to themselves (as the act of passing it on deprives them of it and thus weakens them), while AFO selfishly seeks out ways to steal from others to empower himself, culminating now in not simply hijacking a kid’s life to steal as his new self but to go so far as to deliberately engineer that child’s existence for the sole purpose of being harvested as a vessel. One for All is thematically about empowering others, while All for One is about stealing from them to empower oneself.

    Shigaraki vanquishing AFO through his rage, hate and spite can work on as a character beat, but thematically it’s horrifying. That entire moment if it stands says all that hate and pain destructive impulses are a source of power and strength.

    But by doing it this way, what Horikoshi communicates is that, sure, maybe you can get by with that in the short term. But it doesn’t solve the problem, doesn’t make them go away. Shigaraki pushes AFO down into the depths of his soul, but don’t forget that is where he was just some days before. And now the thing holding him up is this fragile, self-destructive impulse that can’t help but eventually burn out and hollow himself out with it.

    Hence, when something is done to shatter it before it can burn itself out, AFO can resume control again. Which means you need something stronger, more self-sustaining, to solve him and everything that he represents. All the pain, all the manipulation, all the rage and hate and selfishness.

    And, because it’s a Shonen manga the answer is going to be the bonds of companionship between people, pulling each other up and pushing back against something together.

    The answer isn’t a rage that is so strong it would destroy the world itself. It’s finding a way to let the rage and pain go, to stop it from literally holding you in its grasp (hand symbolism!) and receive the help and support of others.
    Here's the thing - I think we can get to those beats in a much stronger manner if Shigaraki did destroy AfO, not just suppress him.

    First, it would show that in the end, his path was ultimately self-destructive. In the prior arc, AfO's petard-hoisting comes from the fact that he sees people as pawns and specimens, and that results in his plans collapsing, because his inability to trust others engenders a lack of trust in others, and that lack of trust thwarts him an a number of ways, leading to his ultimate defeat.

    Second, not only do his plans backfire, they give birth to an even worse villain, as the nihilistic Shigaraki seeks only to destroy - as opposed to AfO, who seeks to rule. This also amplifies the choice that Midorya makes - to take the hard road and choose to try to save him, to save what spark of good left in him exists, rather than just destroy him. This also works with the Greatest Hero concept as well, because the Greatest Hero makes the hard choices, at great cost to themselves.

    Personally, I think those are more interesting arcs than what this change represents, as this is an arc we've seen so many times before.

    Anzekay on
    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • SonelanSonelan Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Kyougu wrote: »
    I'm not sure how I feel about the heart MHA manga developments.
    Not a huge fan of "it was me all along, I orchestrated everything!" But i do like the idea of All For One taking his quirk to replace it with Decay.

    Also Midora is in rough shape

    Im good with it given the wat it’s the perfect dark mirror of
    One For All: a series of heroes each find a worthy successor to pass everything down to to carry on a legacy.

    AfO instead hangs onto his own original existence for like, what, two hundred years, then when he can’t do that any more sets out to deliberately create a vessel to pour himself into, literally stripping away everything that was theirs (the love of their family, their inborn traits) and replacing them with nothing but misery (a quirk that can only destroy, stripped of its ability to restore, the constant abuse and neglect) to break them enough that they’ll won’t stand up any longer when it comes time to take over the body.

    AfO is a rotten piece of shit.
    Nah, it's a shitty asspull of a twist for the reasons Red laid out in her video about the Magnificent Bastard trope - it undercuts both AfO and the other characters arcs to let him be the eleventh hour boss and to have him be the mastermind behind everything. Because, frankly, it was a lot better that AfO's scheming in the end finally was his undoing as all his plans unraveled because he wasn't the chessmaster he thought he was, and making the final fight about Midorya taking the hard road to save Shigaraki was the proper conclusion to his arc.

    This is just so fucking unsatisfying.
    But I mean he is the mastermind behind everything. The manga has not been shy about this, he has literally masterminded everything.

    Even his 11th Hour Boss nature of it isn’t 11th hour, because the entire deal for the past, what, two, three years worth of chapters has been “All For One is making Shigaraki his vessel, literally copying his consciousness over into him and effectively existing in two places at once as a weird hybrid of the two (until suppressed by Shigaraki’s pure rage and hate) and his original self in his original body”

    I can get folks not being happy with where the manga is at right now, but it’s not exactly a roadmap that’s been hidden.
    Two points:

    One, we actually had a pretty good roadmap! We had AfO get hoist on his own petard, as his shortcomings and weaknesses finally caused his plans to fail, which is a good way to conclude his arc - the fact that he was incapable of treating people with respect becoming the core of his downfall. And then we have the fight between Midorya and Shigaraki, where the win condition for the former isn't just stopping the latter, but saving him. These are both good arcs, with some really cool character resolutions!

    And they threw it away for a shitty plot twist that is as trite as it is telegraphed.

    Two, the whole "I manipulated everything!" spin actually weakens chessmaster/magnificent bastard/charismaniac type characters by basically basically handing them the "I WIN" button to get out of any jam. What makes good chessmasters - what makes them compelling - is when they're able to roll with the punches and make the unexpected work for them. With this, AfO just becomes another author's pet antagonist.

    Just because we knew the asspull was coming doesn't make it any less an asspull.
    You do get that he's pontificating, right? The reveal here is that he manipulated Shigaraki from even earlier than was shown (by removing the part of the quirk that could help him and leave him a quirk that could only cause tragedy). Him saying "YOU HAVE NO FREE WILL EVERYTHING IS AS I DESIGNED" is megalomania. Shigaraki has made plenty of decisions on his own, as evident by the fact that his rage made AfO lose control of Shigaraki's body as they fought for control in the psyche.

    There is a difference between a villain making a claim and a villain speaking for the author. The villain here is just going into full megalomania mode and trying to break Shigaraki down to nothing so he can take complete control.

    Also
    not just removing the restorative part of the quirk, but by removing Shigaraki’s own original, unrevealed quirk and substituting it with the remade, destructive one they cultivated from their quirk laboratory once he’d been abused enough by his father and neglected by the rest of his family to break him fully and lash out with it

    It’s a bit more convoluted on the face, but it at the same time:
    reinforces the core thematic elements at play; remember that while the conceit of MHA was “hero high school,” the actual pitch of the story, delivered by Deku’s first chapter narration, is how he became The Greatest Hero. For that, we have AFO as The Greatest Villain, someone from what we’ve seen is so utterly irredeemable he absolutely fits the mold in a way that Shigaraki, with the way we know he’s born from trauma (and even if it’s manufactured by AFO, it doesn’t change that it still happened).

    It also fits in with AFO’s modus operandi, not as a chess master but as someone who sees people not as people but specimens and puppets. His entire empire was building an underground genetic experimentation system to augment his personal quirk retinue while being able to take, warp and grant quirks to his underlings to accomplish his goals. Creating the grandson of one of his rivals into not simply a lab rat, but to serve as his new vessel fits well within that as a crowning triumph of his narcissistic and sociopathic ideology.

    It also again works well to highlight thematic mirroring between AFO the person and the bearers of OFA, as I mentioned before: the bearers of One For All all seek out a worthy successor who will carry their will onward into the future, at cost to themselves (as the act of passing it on deprives them of it and thus weakens them), while AFO selfishly seeks out ways to steal from others to empower himself, culminating now in not simply hijacking a kid’s life to steal as his new self but to go so far as to deliberately engineer that child’s existence for the sole purpose of being harvested as a vessel. One for All is thematically about empowering others, while All for One is about stealing from them to empower oneself.

    Shigaraki vanquishing AFO through his rage, hate and spite can work on as a character beat, but thematically it’s horrifying. That entire moment if it stands says all that hate and pain destructive impulses are a source of power and strength.

    But by doing it this way, what Horikoshi communicates is that, sure, maybe you can get by with that in the short term. But it doesn’t solve the problem, doesn’t make them go away. Shigaraki pushes AFO down into the depths of his soul, but don’t forget that is where he was just some days before. And now the thing holding him up is this fragile, self-destructive impulse that can’t help but eventually burn out and hollow himself out with it.

    Hence, when something is done to shatter it before it can burn itself out, AFO can resume control again. Which means you need something stronger, more self-sustaining, to solve him and everything that he represents. All the pain, all the manipulation, all the rage and hate and selfishness.

    And, because it’s a Shonen manga the answer is going to be the bonds of companionship between people, pulling each other up and pushing back against something together.

    The answer isn’t a rage that is so strong it would destroy the world itself. It’s finding a way to let the rage and pain go, to stop it from literally holding you in its grasp (hand symbolism!) and receive the help and support of others.
    Here's the thing - I think we can get to those beats in a much stronger manner if Shigaraki did destroy AfO, not just suppress him.

    First, it would show that in the end, his path was ultimately self-destructive. In the prior arc, AfO's petard-hoisting comes from the fact that he sees people as pawns and specimens, and that results in his plans collapsing, because his inability to trust others engenders a lack of trust in others, and that lack of trust thwarts him an a number of ways, leading to his ultimate defeat.

    Second, not only do his plans backfire, they give birth to an even worse villain, as the nihilistic Shigaraki seeks only to destroy - as opposed to AfO, who seeks to rule. This also amplifies the choice that Midorya makes - to take the hard road and choose to try to save him, to save what spark of good left in him exists, rather than just destroy him. This also works with the Greatest Hero concept as well, because the Greatest Hero makes the hard choices, at great cost to themselves.

    Personally, I think those are more interesting arcs than what this change represents, as this is an arc we've seen so many times before.
    I think alot of people are gonna disagree with you about what the Greatest Hero is. Personally its someone who will do everything they can to save everyone they can. Not hard men making hard choices.

    Anzekay on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • MadicanMadican No face Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Sonelan wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Kyougu wrote: »
    I'm not sure how I feel about the heart MHA manga developments.
    Not a huge fan of "it was me all along, I orchestrated everything!" But i do like the idea of All For One taking his quirk to replace it with Decay.

    Also Midora is in rough shape

    Im good with it given the wat it’s the perfect dark mirror of
    One For All: a series of heroes each find a worthy successor to pass everything down to to carry on a legacy.

    AfO instead hangs onto his own original existence for like, what, two hundred years, then when he can’t do that any more sets out to deliberately create a vessel to pour himself into, literally stripping away everything that was theirs (the love of their family, their inborn traits) and replacing them with nothing but misery (a quirk that can only destroy, stripped of its ability to restore, the constant abuse and neglect) to break them enough that they’ll won’t stand up any longer when it comes time to take over the body.

    AfO is a rotten piece of shit.
    Nah, it's a shitty asspull of a twist for the reasons Red laid out in her video about the Magnificent Bastard trope - it undercuts both AfO and the other characters arcs to let him be the eleventh hour boss and to have him be the mastermind behind everything. Because, frankly, it was a lot better that AfO's scheming in the end finally was his undoing as all his plans unraveled because he wasn't the chessmaster he thought he was, and making the final fight about Midorya taking the hard road to save Shigaraki was the proper conclusion to his arc.

    This is just so fucking unsatisfying.
    But I mean he is the mastermind behind everything. The manga has not been shy about this, he has literally masterminded everything.

    Even his 11th Hour Boss nature of it isn’t 11th hour, because the entire deal for the past, what, two, three years worth of chapters has been “All For One is making Shigaraki his vessel, literally copying his consciousness over into him and effectively existing in two places at once as a weird hybrid of the two (until suppressed by Shigaraki’s pure rage and hate) and his original self in his original body”

    I can get folks not being happy with where the manga is at right now, but it’s not exactly a roadmap that’s been hidden.
    Two points:

    One, we actually had a pretty good roadmap! We had AfO get hoist on his own petard, as his shortcomings and weaknesses finally caused his plans to fail, which is a good way to conclude his arc - the fact that he was incapable of treating people with respect becoming the core of his downfall. And then we have the fight between Midorya and Shigaraki, where the win condition for the former isn't just stopping the latter, but saving him. These are both good arcs, with some really cool character resolutions!

    And they threw it away for a shitty plot twist that is as trite as it is telegraphed.

    Two, the whole "I manipulated everything!" spin actually weakens chessmaster/magnificent bastard/charismaniac type characters by basically basically handing them the "I WIN" button to get out of any jam. What makes good chessmasters - what makes them compelling - is when they're able to roll with the punches and make the unexpected work for them. With this, AfO just becomes another author's pet antagonist.

    Just because we knew the asspull was coming doesn't make it any less an asspull.
    You do get that he's pontificating, right? The reveal here is that he manipulated Shigaraki from even earlier than was shown (by removing the part of the quirk that could help him and leave him a quirk that could only cause tragedy). Him saying "YOU HAVE NO FREE WILL EVERYTHING IS AS I DESIGNED" is megalomania. Shigaraki has made plenty of decisions on his own, as evident by the fact that his rage made AfO lose control of Shigaraki's body as they fought for control in the psyche.

    There is a difference between a villain making a claim and a villain speaking for the author. The villain here is just going into full megalomania mode and trying to break Shigaraki down to nothing so he can take complete control.

    Also
    not just removing the restorative part of the quirk, but by removing Shigaraki’s own original, unrevealed quirk and substituting it with the remade, destructive one they cultivated from their quirk laboratory once he’d been abused enough by his father and neglected by the rest of his family to break him fully and lash out with it

    It’s a bit more convoluted on the face, but it at the same time:
    reinforces the core thematic elements at play; remember that while the conceit of MHA was “hero high school,” the actual pitch of the story, delivered by Deku’s first chapter narration, is how he became The Greatest Hero. For that, we have AFO as The Greatest Villain, someone from what we’ve seen is so utterly irredeemable he absolutely fits the mold in a way that Shigaraki, with the way we know he’s born from trauma (and even if it’s manufactured by AFO, it doesn’t change that it still happened).

    It also fits in with AFO’s modus operandi, not as a chess master but as someone who sees people not as people but specimens and puppets. His entire empire was building an underground genetic experimentation system to augment his personal quirk retinue while being able to take, warp and grant quirks to his underlings to accomplish his goals. Creating the grandson of one of his rivals into not simply a lab rat, but to serve as his new vessel fits well within that as a crowning triumph of his narcissistic and sociopathic ideology.

    It also again works well to highlight thematic mirroring between AFO the person and the bearers of OFA, as I mentioned before: the bearers of One For All all seek out a worthy successor who will carry their will onward into the future, at cost to themselves (as the act of passing it on deprives them of it and thus weakens them), while AFO selfishly seeks out ways to steal from others to empower himself, culminating now in not simply hijacking a kid’s life to steal as his new self but to go so far as to deliberately engineer that child’s existence for the sole purpose of being harvested as a vessel. One for All is thematically about empowering others, while All for One is about stealing from them to empower oneself.

    Shigaraki vanquishing AFO through his rage, hate and spite can work on as a character beat, but thematically it’s horrifying. That entire moment if it stands says all that hate and pain destructive impulses are a source of power and strength.

    But by doing it this way, what Horikoshi communicates is that, sure, maybe you can get by with that in the short term. But it doesn’t solve the problem, doesn’t make them go away. Shigaraki pushes AFO down into the depths of his soul, but don’t forget that is where he was just some days before. And now the thing holding him up is this fragile, self-destructive impulse that can’t help but eventually burn out and hollow himself out with it.

    Hence, when something is done to shatter it before it can burn itself out, AFO can resume control again. Which means you need something stronger, more self-sustaining, to solve him and everything that he represents. All the pain, all the manipulation, all the rage and hate and selfishness.

    And, because it’s a Shonen manga the answer is going to be the bonds of companionship between people, pulling each other up and pushing back against something together.

    The answer isn’t a rage that is so strong it would destroy the world itself. It’s finding a way to let the rage and pain go, to stop it from literally holding you in its grasp (hand symbolism!) and receive the help and support of others.
    Here's the thing - I think we can get to those beats in a much stronger manner if Shigaraki did destroy AfO, not just suppress him.

    First, it would show that in the end, his path was ultimately self-destructive. In the prior arc, AfO's petard-hoisting comes from the fact that he sees people as pawns and specimens, and that results in his plans collapsing, because his inability to trust others engenders a lack of trust in others, and that lack of trust thwarts him an a number of ways, leading to his ultimate defeat.

    Second, not only do his plans backfire, they give birth to an even worse villain, as the nihilistic Shigaraki seeks only to destroy - as opposed to AfO, who seeks to rule. This also amplifies the choice that Midorya makes - to take the hard road and choose to try to save him, to save what spark of good left in him exists, rather than just destroy him. This also works with the Greatest Hero concept as well, because the Greatest Hero makes the hard choices, at great cost to themselves.

    Personally, I think those are more interesting arcs than what this change represents, as this is an arc we've seen so many times before.
    I think alot of people are gonna disagree with you about what the Greatest Hero is. Personally its someone who will do everything they can to save everyone they can. Not hard men making hard choices.
    Shirou Emiya gets a chill down their back.

    Anzekay on
  • KayuraKayura Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    I love that Trope Talks video just for how much it shits on Age of Ultron. Because fuck Age of Ultron.

    Anzekay on
    Gridman! Baby DAN DAN! Baby DAN DAN!
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Madican wrote: »
    Sonelan wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Kyougu wrote: »
    I'm not sure how I feel about the heart MHA manga developments.
    Not a huge fan of "it was me all along, I orchestrated everything!" But i do like the idea of All For One taking his quirk to replace it with Decay.

    Also Midora is in rough shape

    Im good with it given the wat it’s the perfect dark mirror of
    One For All: a series of heroes each find a worthy successor to pass everything down to to carry on a legacy.

    AfO instead hangs onto his own original existence for like, what, two hundred years, then when he can’t do that any more sets out to deliberately create a vessel to pour himself into, literally stripping away everything that was theirs (the love of their family, their inborn traits) and replacing them with nothing but misery (a quirk that can only destroy, stripped of its ability to restore, the constant abuse and neglect) to break them enough that they’ll won’t stand up any longer when it comes time to take over the body.

    AfO is a rotten piece of shit.
    Nah, it's a shitty asspull of a twist for the reasons Red laid out in her video about the Magnificent Bastard trope - it undercuts both AfO and the other characters arcs to let him be the eleventh hour boss and to have him be the mastermind behind everything. Because, frankly, it was a lot better that AfO's scheming in the end finally was his undoing as all his plans unraveled because he wasn't the chessmaster he thought he was, and making the final fight about Midorya taking the hard road to save Shigaraki was the proper conclusion to his arc.

    This is just so fucking unsatisfying.
    But I mean he is the mastermind behind everything. The manga has not been shy about this, he has literally masterminded everything.

    Even his 11th Hour Boss nature of it isn’t 11th hour, because the entire deal for the past, what, two, three years worth of chapters has been “All For One is making Shigaraki his vessel, literally copying his consciousness over into him and effectively existing in two places at once as a weird hybrid of the two (until suppressed by Shigaraki’s pure rage and hate) and his original self in his original body”

    I can get folks not being happy with where the manga is at right now, but it’s not exactly a roadmap that’s been hidden.
    Two points:

    One, we actually had a pretty good roadmap! We had AfO get hoist on his own petard, as his shortcomings and weaknesses finally caused his plans to fail, which is a good way to conclude his arc - the fact that he was incapable of treating people with respect becoming the core of his downfall. And then we have the fight between Midorya and Shigaraki, where the win condition for the former isn't just stopping the latter, but saving him. These are both good arcs, with some really cool character resolutions!

    And they threw it away for a shitty plot twist that is as trite as it is telegraphed.

    Two, the whole "I manipulated everything!" spin actually weakens chessmaster/magnificent bastard/charismaniac type characters by basically basically handing them the "I WIN" button to get out of any jam. What makes good chessmasters - what makes them compelling - is when they're able to roll with the punches and make the unexpected work for them. With this, AfO just becomes another author's pet antagonist.

    Just because we knew the asspull was coming doesn't make it any less an asspull.
    You do get that he's pontificating, right? The reveal here is that he manipulated Shigaraki from even earlier than was shown (by removing the part of the quirk that could help him and leave him a quirk that could only cause tragedy). Him saying "YOU HAVE NO FREE WILL EVERYTHING IS AS I DESIGNED" is megalomania. Shigaraki has made plenty of decisions on his own, as evident by the fact that his rage made AfO lose control of Shigaraki's body as they fought for control in the psyche.

    There is a difference between a villain making a claim and a villain speaking for the author. The villain here is just going into full megalomania mode and trying to break Shigaraki down to nothing so he can take complete control.

    Also
    not just removing the restorative part of the quirk, but by removing Shigaraki’s own original, unrevealed quirk and substituting it with the remade, destructive one they cultivated from their quirk laboratory once he’d been abused enough by his father and neglected by the rest of his family to break him fully and lash out with it

    It’s a bit more convoluted on the face, but it at the same time:
    reinforces the core thematic elements at play; remember that while the conceit of MHA was “hero high school,” the actual pitch of the story, delivered by Deku’s first chapter narration, is how he became The Greatest Hero. For that, we have AFO as The Greatest Villain, someone from what we’ve seen is so utterly irredeemable he absolutely fits the mold in a way that Shigaraki, with the way we know he’s born from trauma (and even if it’s manufactured by AFO, it doesn’t change that it still happened).

    It also fits in with AFO’s modus operandi, not as a chess master but as someone who sees people not as people but specimens and puppets. His entire empire was building an underground genetic experimentation system to augment his personal quirk retinue while being able to take, warp and grant quirks to his underlings to accomplish his goals. Creating the grandson of one of his rivals into not simply a lab rat, but to serve as his new vessel fits well within that as a crowning triumph of his narcissistic and sociopathic ideology.

    It also again works well to highlight thematic mirroring between AFO the person and the bearers of OFA, as I mentioned before: the bearers of One For All all seek out a worthy successor who will carry their will onward into the future, at cost to themselves (as the act of passing it on deprives them of it and thus weakens them), while AFO selfishly seeks out ways to steal from others to empower himself, culminating now in not simply hijacking a kid’s life to steal as his new self but to go so far as to deliberately engineer that child’s existence for the sole purpose of being harvested as a vessel. One for All is thematically about empowering others, while All for One is about stealing from them to empower oneself.

    Shigaraki vanquishing AFO through his rage, hate and spite can work on as a character beat, but thematically it’s horrifying. That entire moment if it stands says all that hate and pain destructive impulses are a source of power and strength.

    But by doing it this way, what Horikoshi communicates is that, sure, maybe you can get by with that in the short term. But it doesn’t solve the problem, doesn’t make them go away. Shigaraki pushes AFO down into the depths of his soul, but don’t forget that is where he was just some days before. And now the thing holding him up is this fragile, self-destructive impulse that can’t help but eventually burn out and hollow himself out with it.

    Hence, when something is done to shatter it before it can burn itself out, AFO can resume control again. Which means you need something stronger, more self-sustaining, to solve him and everything that he represents. All the pain, all the manipulation, all the rage and hate and selfishness.

    And, because it’s a Shonen manga the answer is going to be the bonds of companionship between people, pulling each other up and pushing back against something together.

    The answer isn’t a rage that is so strong it would destroy the world itself. It’s finding a way to let the rage and pain go, to stop it from literally holding you in its grasp (hand symbolism!) and receive the help and support of others.
    Here's the thing - I think we can get to those beats in a much stronger manner if Shigaraki did destroy AfO, not just suppress him.

    First, it would show that in the end, his path was ultimately self-destructive. In the prior arc, AfO's petard-hoisting comes from the fact that he sees people as pawns and specimens, and that results in his plans collapsing, because his inability to trust others engenders a lack of trust in others, and that lack of trust thwarts him an a number of ways, leading to his ultimate defeat.

    Second, not only do his plans backfire, they give birth to an even worse villain, as the nihilistic Shigaraki seeks only to destroy - as opposed to AfO, who seeks to rule. This also amplifies the choice that Midorya makes - to take the hard road and choose to try to save him, to save what spark of good left in him exists, rather than just destroy him. This also works with the Greatest Hero concept as well, because the Greatest Hero makes the hard choices, at great cost to themselves.

    Personally, I think those are more interesting arcs than what this change represents, as this is an arc we've seen so many times before.
    I think alot of people are gonna disagree with you about what the Greatest Hero is. Personally its someone who will do everything they can to save everyone they can. Not hard men making hard choices.
    Shirou Emiya gets a chill down their back.
    snq7srjw48oj.jpeg
    2lmqpdjp5dto.jpeg
    c0fz5ipvk2k7.jpeg


    2gwzr2nu99wl.jpeg

    Anzekay on
  • SonelanSonelan Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Madican wrote: »
    Sonelan wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Kyougu wrote: »
    I'm not sure how I feel about the heart MHA manga developments.
    Not a huge fan of "it was me all along, I orchestrated everything!" But i do like the idea of All For One taking his quirk to replace it with Decay.

    Also Midora is in rough shape

    Im good with it given the wat it’s the perfect dark mirror of
    One For All: a series of heroes each find a worthy successor to pass everything down to to carry on a legacy.

    AfO instead hangs onto his own original existence for like, what, two hundred years, then when he can’t do that any more sets out to deliberately create a vessel to pour himself into, literally stripping away everything that was theirs (the love of their family, their inborn traits) and replacing them with nothing but misery (a quirk that can only destroy, stripped of its ability to restore, the constant abuse and neglect) to break them enough that they’ll won’t stand up any longer when it comes time to take over the body.

    AfO is a rotten piece of shit.
    Nah, it's a shitty asspull of a twist for the reasons Red laid out in her video about the Magnificent Bastard trope - it undercuts both AfO and the other characters arcs to let him be the eleventh hour boss and to have him be the mastermind behind everything. Because, frankly, it was a lot better that AfO's scheming in the end finally was his undoing as all his plans unraveled because he wasn't the chessmaster he thought he was, and making the final fight about Midorya taking the hard road to save Shigaraki was the proper conclusion to his arc.

    This is just so fucking unsatisfying.
    But I mean he is the mastermind behind everything. The manga has not been shy about this, he has literally masterminded everything.

    Even his 11th Hour Boss nature of it isn’t 11th hour, because the entire deal for the past, what, two, three years worth of chapters has been “All For One is making Shigaraki his vessel, literally copying his consciousness over into him and effectively existing in two places at once as a weird hybrid of the two (until suppressed by Shigaraki’s pure rage and hate) and his original self in his original body”

    I can get folks not being happy with where the manga is at right now, but it’s not exactly a roadmap that’s been hidden.
    Two points:

    One, we actually had a pretty good roadmap! We had AfO get hoist on his own petard, as his shortcomings and weaknesses finally caused his plans to fail, which is a good way to conclude his arc - the fact that he was incapable of treating people with respect becoming the core of his downfall. And then we have the fight between Midorya and Shigaraki, where the win condition for the former isn't just stopping the latter, but saving him. These are both good arcs, with some really cool character resolutions!

    And they threw it away for a shitty plot twist that is as trite as it is telegraphed.

    Two, the whole "I manipulated everything!" spin actually weakens chessmaster/magnificent bastard/charismaniac type characters by basically basically handing them the "I WIN" button to get out of any jam. What makes good chessmasters - what makes them compelling - is when they're able to roll with the punches and make the unexpected work for them. With this, AfO just becomes another author's pet antagonist.

    Just because we knew the asspull was coming doesn't make it any less an asspull.
    You do get that he's pontificating, right? The reveal here is that he manipulated Shigaraki from even earlier than was shown (by removing the part of the quirk that could help him and leave him a quirk that could only cause tragedy). Him saying "YOU HAVE NO FREE WILL EVERYTHING IS AS I DESIGNED" is megalomania. Shigaraki has made plenty of decisions on his own, as evident by the fact that his rage made AfO lose control of Shigaraki's body as they fought for control in the psyche.

    There is a difference between a villain making a claim and a villain speaking for the author. The villain here is just going into full megalomania mode and trying to break Shigaraki down to nothing so he can take complete control.

    Also
    not just removing the restorative part of the quirk, but by removing Shigaraki’s own original, unrevealed quirk and substituting it with the remade, destructive one they cultivated from their quirk laboratory once he’d been abused enough by his father and neglected by the rest of his family to break him fully and lash out with it

    It’s a bit more convoluted on the face, but it at the same time:
    reinforces the core thematic elements at play; remember that while the conceit of MHA was “hero high school,” the actual pitch of the story, delivered by Deku’s first chapter narration, is how he became The Greatest Hero. For that, we have AFO as The Greatest Villain, someone from what we’ve seen is so utterly irredeemable he absolutely fits the mold in a way that Shigaraki, with the way we know he’s born from trauma (and even if it’s manufactured by AFO, it doesn’t change that it still happened).

    It also fits in with AFO’s modus operandi, not as a chess master but as someone who sees people not as people but specimens and puppets. His entire empire was building an underground genetic experimentation system to augment his personal quirk retinue while being able to take, warp and grant quirks to his underlings to accomplish his goals. Creating the grandson of one of his rivals into not simply a lab rat, but to serve as his new vessel fits well within that as a crowning triumph of his narcissistic and sociopathic ideology.

    It also again works well to highlight thematic mirroring between AFO the person and the bearers of OFA, as I mentioned before: the bearers of One For All all seek out a worthy successor who will carry their will onward into the future, at cost to themselves (as the act of passing it on deprives them of it and thus weakens them), while AFO selfishly seeks out ways to steal from others to empower himself, culminating now in not simply hijacking a kid’s life to steal as his new self but to go so far as to deliberately engineer that child’s existence for the sole purpose of being harvested as a vessel. One for All is thematically about empowering others, while All for One is about stealing from them to empower oneself.

    Shigaraki vanquishing AFO through his rage, hate and spite can work on as a character beat, but thematically it’s horrifying. That entire moment if it stands says all that hate and pain destructive impulses are a source of power and strength.

    But by doing it this way, what Horikoshi communicates is that, sure, maybe you can get by with that in the short term. But it doesn’t solve the problem, doesn’t make them go away. Shigaraki pushes AFO down into the depths of his soul, but don’t forget that is where he was just some days before. And now the thing holding him up is this fragile, self-destructive impulse that can’t help but eventually burn out and hollow himself out with it.

    Hence, when something is done to shatter it before it can burn itself out, AFO can resume control again. Which means you need something stronger, more self-sustaining, to solve him and everything that he represents. All the pain, all the manipulation, all the rage and hate and selfishness.

    And, because it’s a Shonen manga the answer is going to be the bonds of companionship between people, pulling each other up and pushing back against something together.

    The answer isn’t a rage that is so strong it would destroy the world itself. It’s finding a way to let the rage and pain go, to stop it from literally holding you in its grasp (hand symbolism!) and receive the help and support of others.
    Here's the thing - I think we can get to those beats in a much stronger manner if Shigaraki did destroy AfO, not just suppress him.

    First, it would show that in the end, his path was ultimately self-destructive. In the prior arc, AfO's petard-hoisting comes from the fact that he sees people as pawns and specimens, and that results in his plans collapsing, because his inability to trust others engenders a lack of trust in others, and that lack of trust thwarts him an a number of ways, leading to his ultimate defeat.

    Second, not only do his plans backfire, they give birth to an even worse villain, as the nihilistic Shigaraki seeks only to destroy - as opposed to AfO, who seeks to rule. This also amplifies the choice that Midorya makes - to take the hard road and choose to try to save him, to save what spark of good left in him exists, rather than just destroy him. This also works with the Greatest Hero concept as well, because the Greatest Hero makes the hard choices, at great cost to themselves.

    Personally, I think those are more interesting arcs than what this change represents, as this is an arc we've seen so many times before.
    I think alot of people are gonna disagree with you about what the Greatest Hero is. Personally its someone who will do everything they can to save everyone they can. Not hard men making hard choices.
    Shirou Emiya gets a chill down their back.
    I was more thinking like Superman and less self destructive.

    Anzekay on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • initiatefailureinitiatefailure Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Unrelated I have started the zeta zeta gundam and god damn the repeatedly yelling “it’s not an anime it’s true” theme song won’t leave my head ever again. This is an ultimate weaponized evil earworm

    Anzekay on
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Unrelated I have started the zeta zeta gundam and god damn the repeatedly yelling “it’s not an anime it’s true” theme song won’t leave my head ever again. This is an ultimate weaponized evil earworm

    Those old earthnoids who have forgotten their dreams, who don’t realize that the word can’t be looked at through the lens of “common sense”!

    Anzekay on
  • NaphtaliNaphtali Hazy + Flow SeaRegistered User regular
    edited April 14
    both the zz OP songs are well... op

    Anzekay on
    Steam | Nintendo ID: Naphtali | Wish List
  • KayuraKayura Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Silent Voice has the slight edge for me, though, because Haman Karn.

    Anzekay on
    Gridman! Baby DAN DAN! Baby DAN DAN!
  • Gnome-InterruptusGnome-Interruptus Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    TryCatcher wrote: »
    That entire thing is awful and all, but I'm more concerned about the bit where teachers fighting against sending kids back to school during COVID being a) A bad thing and b) For the benefit of the teachers.

    I'm not the only one looking at that bit of unhinged lunacy, right? Because Jesus.

    Well it did benefit the teachers because online learning prevents students who were younger and more resilient to the pandemic from spreading it to teachers who were older and more vulnerable.

    At a cost that was mostly borne by students and parents. Though it obviously also protected parents and families of students from any pathogens that classmates might spread.

    Absolutely the right call imho though.

    Anzekay on
    steam_sig.png
    MWO: Adamski
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Sonelan wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Kyougu wrote: »
    I'm not sure how I feel about the heart MHA manga developments.
    Not a huge fan of "it was me all along, I orchestrated everything!" But i do like the idea of All For One taking his quirk to replace it with Decay.

    Also Midora is in rough shape

    Im good with it given the wat it’s the perfect dark mirror of
    One For All: a series of heroes each find a worthy successor to pass everything down to to carry on a legacy.

    AfO instead hangs onto his own original existence for like, what, two hundred years, then when he can’t do that any more sets out to deliberately create a vessel to pour himself into, literally stripping away everything that was theirs (the love of their family, their inborn traits) and replacing them with nothing but misery (a quirk that can only destroy, stripped of its ability to restore, the constant abuse and neglect) to break them enough that they’ll won’t stand up any longer when it comes time to take over the body.

    AfO is a rotten piece of shit.
    Nah, it's a shitty asspull of a twist for the reasons Red laid out in her video about the Magnificent Bastard trope - it undercuts both AfO and the other characters arcs to let him be the eleventh hour boss and to have him be the mastermind behind everything. Because, frankly, it was a lot better that AfO's scheming in the end finally was his undoing as all his plans unraveled because he wasn't the chessmaster he thought he was, and making the final fight about Midorya taking the hard road to save Shigaraki was the proper conclusion to his arc.

    This is just so fucking unsatisfying.
    But I mean he is the mastermind behind everything. The manga has not been shy about this, he has literally masterminded everything.

    Even his 11th Hour Boss nature of it isn’t 11th hour, because the entire deal for the past, what, two, three years worth of chapters has been “All For One is making Shigaraki his vessel, literally copying his consciousness over into him and effectively existing in two places at once as a weird hybrid of the two (until suppressed by Shigaraki’s pure rage and hate) and his original self in his original body”

    I can get folks not being happy with where the manga is at right now, but it’s not exactly a roadmap that’s been hidden.
    Two points:

    One, we actually had a pretty good roadmap! We had AfO get hoist on his own petard, as his shortcomings and weaknesses finally caused his plans to fail, which is a good way to conclude his arc - the fact that he was incapable of treating people with respect becoming the core of his downfall. And then we have the fight between Midorya and Shigaraki, where the win condition for the former isn't just stopping the latter, but saving him. These are both good arcs, with some really cool character resolutions!

    And they threw it away for a shitty plot twist that is as trite as it is telegraphed.

    Two, the whole "I manipulated everything!" spin actually weakens chessmaster/magnificent bastard/charismaniac type characters by basically basically handing them the "I WIN" button to get out of any jam. What makes good chessmasters - what makes them compelling - is when they're able to roll with the punches and make the unexpected work for them. With this, AfO just becomes another author's pet antagonist.

    Just because we knew the asspull was coming doesn't make it any less an asspull.
    You do get that he's pontificating, right? The reveal here is that he manipulated Shigaraki from even earlier than was shown (by removing the part of the quirk that could help him and leave him a quirk that could only cause tragedy). Him saying "YOU HAVE NO FREE WILL EVERYTHING IS AS I DESIGNED" is megalomania. Shigaraki has made plenty of decisions on his own, as evident by the fact that his rage made AfO lose control of Shigaraki's body as they fought for control in the psyche.

    There is a difference between a villain making a claim and a villain speaking for the author. The villain here is just going into full megalomania mode and trying to break Shigaraki down to nothing so he can take complete control.

    Also
    not just removing the restorative part of the quirk, but by removing Shigaraki’s own original, unrevealed quirk and substituting it with the remade, destructive one they cultivated from their quirk laboratory once he’d been abused enough by his father and neglected by the rest of his family to break him fully and lash out with it

    It’s a bit more convoluted on the face, but it at the same time:
    reinforces the core thematic elements at play; remember that while the conceit of MHA was “hero high school,” the actual pitch of the story, delivered by Deku’s first chapter narration, is how he became The Greatest Hero. For that, we have AFO as The Greatest Villain, someone from what we’ve seen is so utterly irredeemable he absolutely fits the mold in a way that Shigaraki, with the way we know he’s born from trauma (and even if it’s manufactured by AFO, it doesn’t change that it still happened).

    It also fits in with AFO’s modus operandi, not as a chess master but as someone who sees people not as people but specimens and puppets. His entire empire was building an underground genetic experimentation system to augment his personal quirk retinue while being able to take, warp and grant quirks to his underlings to accomplish his goals. Creating the grandson of one of his rivals into not simply a lab rat, but to serve as his new vessel fits well within that as a crowning triumph of his narcissistic and sociopathic ideology.

    It also again works well to highlight thematic mirroring between AFO the person and the bearers of OFA, as I mentioned before: the bearers of One For All all seek out a worthy successor who will carry their will onward into the future, at cost to themselves (as the act of passing it on deprives them of it and thus weakens them), while AFO selfishly seeks out ways to steal from others to empower himself, culminating now in not simply hijacking a kid’s life to steal as his new self but to go so far as to deliberately engineer that child’s existence for the sole purpose of being harvested as a vessel. One for All is thematically about empowering others, while All for One is about stealing from them to empower oneself.

    Shigaraki vanquishing AFO through his rage, hate and spite can work on as a character beat, but thematically it’s horrifying. That entire moment if it stands says all that hate and pain destructive impulses are a source of power and strength.

    But by doing it this way, what Horikoshi communicates is that, sure, maybe you can get by with that in the short term. But it doesn’t solve the problem, doesn’t make them go away. Shigaraki pushes AFO down into the depths of his soul, but don’t forget that is where he was just some days before. And now the thing holding him up is this fragile, self-destructive impulse that can’t help but eventually burn out and hollow himself out with it.

    Hence, when something is done to shatter it before it can burn itself out, AFO can resume control again. Which means you need something stronger, more self-sustaining, to solve him and everything that he represents. All the pain, all the manipulation, all the rage and hate and selfishness.

    And, because it’s a Shonen manga the answer is going to be the bonds of companionship between people, pulling each other up and pushing back against something together.

    The answer isn’t a rage that is so strong it would destroy the world itself. It’s finding a way to let the rage and pain go, to stop it from literally holding you in its grasp (hand symbolism!) and receive the help and support of others.
    Here's the thing - I think we can get to those beats in a much stronger manner if Shigaraki did destroy AfO, not just suppress him.

    First, it would show that in the end, his path was ultimately self-destructive. In the prior arc, AfO's petard-hoisting comes from the fact that he sees people as pawns and specimens, and that results in his plans collapsing, because his inability to trust others engenders a lack of trust in others, and that lack of trust thwarts him an a number of ways, leading to his ultimate defeat.

    Second, not only do his plans backfire, they give birth to an even worse villain, as the nihilistic Shigaraki seeks only to destroy - as opposed to AfO, who seeks to rule. This also amplifies the choice that Midorya makes - to take the hard road and choose to try to save him, to save what spark of good left in him exists, rather than just destroy him. This also works with the Greatest Hero concept as well, because the Greatest Hero makes the hard choices, at great cost to themselves.

    Personally, I think those are more interesting arcs than what this change represents, as this is an arc we've seen so many times before.
    I think alot of people are gonna disagree with you about what the Greatest Hero is. Personally its someone who will do everything they can to save everyone they can. Not hard men making hard choices.
    To be fair, that was a very bad turn of phrase on my part - my point is that the Greatest Hero is able to make the choices to save people, shouldering the risk in doing so.

    Seriously, Hedgie - what were you thinking there? You damn well know the origin of that phrase.

    Anzekay on
    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] regular
    edited April 14
    The user and all related content has been deleted.

    Anzekay on
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] regular
    edited April 14
    The user and all related content has been deleted.

    Anzekay on
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited April 14
    GR_Zombie wrote: »
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    Naphtali wrote: »
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    Berserk 1997 sure does go full Devilman near the end, eh?

    oh my

    your first time with the eclipse?

    Yep, totally blind.

    It’s a real gut punch that the anime ends on perhaps the lowest point for all the characters involved.

    And every adaptation of what came after has all been a dumpster fire, I gather?

    Anzekay on
    z48g7weaopj2.png
  • Moth 13Moth 13 Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Lanz wrote: »
    I think the cause is more this arc has dragged on forever, which means by the time we get to these reveals that not just the foreshadowing but the outright earlier established elements from like a year and a half to two years ago get forgotten.

    EDIT: yeah, the arc started on Valentine’s Day of 2022, with the Final Act Saga itself kicking off in March 2021

    EDIT: Chapters 297 and 298, from January 2021:
    urtlbgnpcha6.jpeg
    jqskak79ejme.jpeg
    asy77mh2jbuy.jpeg
    doo2hiobgy5e.jpeg
    g522jog09458.jpeg




    January of last year, ch 379, where Shigaraki used his hate and anger as the fuel to drive AFO’s consciousness into the backseat when he’s been basically spending the earlier part of that arc.

    dabqbdxjdxd2.jpeg
    7qy7u2l0w9gg.jpeg
    959tgm8p4nr9.jpeg


    And now the entire basis of that hate and rage has been undermined, which mean the thing keeping AFO in check is now broken, letting him resume control until he’s purged from Shigaraki

    EDIT: pages out of order need to fix once I’m not on phone

    I don't think people forgot,
    I think it's more that people were hoping we were done with that plotline after it had seemed to have already paid off and reached a reasonably satisfying conclusion.

    Anzekay on
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    GR_Zombie wrote: »
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    Naphtali wrote: »
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    Berserk 1997 sure does go full Devilman near the end, eh?

    oh my

    your first time with the eclipse?

    Yep, totally blind.

    It’s a real gut punch that the anime ends on perhaps the lowest point for all the characters involved.

    And every adaptation of what came after has all been a dumpster fire, I gather?

    There’s only been the one, anime-wise:

    lmyfjl.gif

    The preceding adaptation was another adaptation of the Golden Age, and outside of those three the rest are, like, video games.

    Anzekay on
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Unrelated I have started the zeta zeta gundam and god damn the repeatedly yelling “it’s not an anime it’s true” theme song won’t leave my head ever again. This is an ultimate weaponized evil earworm

    A NI ME JA NA I!

    Anzekay on
    BahamutZERO.gif
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Moth 13 wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    I think the cause is more this arc has dragged on forever, which means by the time we get to these reveals that not just the foreshadowing but the outright earlier established elements from like a year and a half to two years ago get forgotten.

    EDIT: yeah, the arc started on Valentine’s Day of 2022, with the Final Act Saga itself kicking off in March 2021

    EDIT: Chapters 297 and 298, from January 2021:
    urtlbgnpcha6.jpeg
    jqskak79ejme.jpeg
    asy77mh2jbuy.jpeg
    doo2hiobgy5e.jpeg
    g522jog09458.jpeg




    January of last year, ch 379, where Shigaraki used his hate and anger as the fuel to drive AFO’s consciousness into the backseat when he’s been basically spending the earlier part of that arc.

    dabqbdxjdxd2.jpeg
    7qy7u2l0w9gg.jpeg
    959tgm8p4nr9.jpeg


    And now the entire basis of that hate and rage has been undermined, which mean the thing keeping AFO in check is now broken, letting him resume control until he’s purged from Shigaraki

    EDIT: pages out of order need to fix once I’m not on phone

    I don't think people forgot,
    I think it's more that people were hoping we were done with that plotline after it had seemed to have already paid off and reached a reasonably satisfying conclusion.
    the problem is it’s a payoff just on a plot level. Thematically it doesn’t mesh with the rest of the work, because the entire idea there is Shigaraki “won” because of being sufficiently hateful and full of rage and pain to stuff AFO back down.

    Which yeah you could do that, but it wouldn’t be the story that MHA is trying to tell, and would bring it into contradiction with the thematic resonance of One For All. It’s not a story where hatred and pain are things that make you strong, and Shigaraki’s whole deal has been how that hate has been so destructive to him and others. As much as he talks in recent chapters about wanting to be a “hero for the villains,” nothing he did has helped them, and the thing fueling him is, has been pointed out, driving him to destroy everything. It doesn’t make sense then for that anger and hate to be a thing that is actually empowering, but is stronger thematically if it’s illusory.

    Anzekay on
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Unrelated I have started the zeta zeta gundam and god damn the repeatedly yelling “it’s not an anime it’s true” theme song won’t leave my head ever again. This is an ultimate weaponized evil earworm

    A NI ME JA NA I!

    ANIME JA NAI

    HONTOU NO KOTO SA

    Anzekay on
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    I still wanna know what the hell the giant circuit board is meant to symbolize at the end of the OP as it rises up like a fucking Monolith.

    Anzekay on
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    it represents a giant circuit board that one of the animators thought looked cool and wanted to have a shot of

    Anzekay on
    BahamutZERO.gif
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited April 14
    THAT'S how the show ends?! Good lord, that's darker than how Fate/Zero ends.

    Anzekay on
    z48g7weaopj2.png
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    which one? zeta gundam?

    Anzekay on
    BahamutZERO.gif
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited April 14
    which one? zeta gundam?

    Berserk '97.

    Anzekay on
    z48g7weaopj2.png
  • KanaKana Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    The Berserk movies aren't awful, but they focus too much on the battles and don't seem to realize the actual heart of that arc is all the quiet bits

    It's also just plain not directed as well, like the assassination scene in the TV series is barely animated and yet it looks waaaay better than the movie's version:


    uhh spoiling for guts murderin' a kid preview image

    Anzekay 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.
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Lanz wrote: »
    Moth 13 wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    I think the cause is more this arc has dragged on forever, which means by the time we get to these reveals that not just the foreshadowing but the outright earlier established elements from like a year and a half to two years ago get forgotten.

    EDIT: yeah, the arc started on Valentine’s Day of 2022, with the Final Act Saga itself kicking off in March 2021

    EDIT: Chapters 297 and 298, from January 2021:
    urtlbgnpcha6.jpeg
    jqskak79ejme.jpeg
    asy77mh2jbuy.jpeg
    doo2hiobgy5e.jpeg
    g522jog09458.jpeg




    January of last year, ch 379, where Shigaraki used his hate and anger as the fuel to drive AFO’s consciousness into the backseat when he’s been basically spending the earlier part of that arc.

    dabqbdxjdxd2.jpeg
    7qy7u2l0w9gg.jpeg
    959tgm8p4nr9.jpeg


    And now the entire basis of that hate and rage has been undermined, which mean the thing keeping AFO in check is now broken, letting him resume control until he’s purged from Shigaraki

    EDIT: pages out of order need to fix once I’m not on phone

    I don't think people forgot,
    I think it's more that people were hoping we were done with that plotline after it had seemed to have already paid off and reached a reasonably satisfying conclusion.
    the problem is it’s a payoff just on a plot level. Thematically it doesn’t mesh with the rest of the work, because the entire idea there is Shigaraki “won” because of being sufficiently hateful and full of rage and pain to stuff AFO back down.

    Which yeah you could do that, but it wouldn’t be the story that MHA is trying to tell, and would bring it into contradiction with the thematic resonance of One For All. It’s not a story where hatred and pain are things that make you strong, and Shigaraki’s whole deal has been how that hate has been so destructive to him and others. As much as he talks in recent chapters about wanting to be a “hero for the villains,” nothing he did has helped them, and the thing fueling him is, has been pointed out, driving him to destroy everything. It doesn’t make sense then for that anger and hate to be a thing that is actually empowering, but is stronger thematically if it’s illusory.
    See, this is where I think you're missing where people like myself are coming from - what enabled Shigaraki to defeat AfO wasn't hate and pain, but the simple fact that he didn't trust him. And why should he - he's not an idiot, he saw how the man operated, and I'd imagine he had some idea of his long term plans and what they meant for him. And so he takes precautions, which winds up being yet another way AfO's attitude towards others winds up fucking him over, because seeing Shigaraki as his personal pet and guinea pig, he wouldn't be able to comprehend that he would prepare himself for such an attack from the inside. And that works so much better with the AfO downfall arc, as it's yet another way to show how his inability to see people as people winds up being his downfall - it's especially thematic because his downfall here is that he was incapable of grasping that someone could plan around him. And this works both on the plot and theme levels, and to me is a lot more interesting than having AfO come back.

    Anzekay on
    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] regular
    edited April 14
    The user and all related content has been deleted.

    Anzekay on
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    Berserk talk reminds me, how is the continuation under Mori and Staff going?

    Anzekay on
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    which one? zeta gundam?

    Berserk '97.

    ohhhh yeah that tracks lol
    it ends at the basically darkest point of the whole grimdark series

    Anzekay on
    BahamutZERO.gif
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] regular
    edited April 14
    The user and all related content has been deleted.

    Anzekay on
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] regular
    edited April 14
    The user and all related content has been deleted.

    Anzekay on
  • PaperLuigi44PaperLuigi44 My amazement is at maximum capacity. Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    I think Diamond is Unbreakable broke me for absurd enemies to friends progression because I just completed the express train arc in Golden Wind and thought "Hmm, the guy who licked the protagonist's sweat in his first appearance rules, huh?"

    (Fuck Hazamada, though)

    Anzekay on
  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    edited April 14
    I think Diamond is Unbreakable broke me for absurd enemies to friends progression because I just completed the express train arc in Golden Wind and thought "Hmm, the guy who licked the protagonist's sweat in his first appearance rules, huh?"

    (Fuck Hazamada, though)

    Golden Wind has an entirely different system of anime friendship
    Arrivederci

    Anzekay on
Sign In or Register to comment.