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[Cruxador]

JFC Mob, that wasn't a turn for dark, you took a goddamn dimensional door into the fucking elemental plane of things going to shit.

WHAT

Yeah, One Punch Man may have that underlying throughline about ennui, but the dark side of things is much less of a focus than in Mob. I suspect part of the reason is that market forces encouraged ONE to do more action stuff with OPM, but he still wanted his outlet for more emotional stuff. Especially considering how he's rewriting for the murata manga to be much more action oriented.

[JoshuaFH]

JFC Mob, that wasn't a turn for dark, you took a goddamn dimensional door into the fucking elemental plane of things going to shit.

WHAT

"Oh man that's some nice slice of life you got there Mob Psycho 100, it'd be a shame if something... happened to it."

[Jopax]

The utter suddenness of it is what caught me off guard I think. As you say, a pretty good SoL show, has its ups and downs but for the most part the tone is predictable. And then they hit you with that shit, zero foreshadowing, zero warning, zero fuck all, just bam, straight into the nuts the steel-toed boot goes. And then the fucking episode ends so you have no time to process the thing or how Mob reacts to it other than "Oh, oh no"

[JoshuaFH]

Honestly the docile direction the show was taking was very unusual, since ONE has shown that he loves both rapid pacing and unexpected twists; the slow slice of life direction the show was firmly in felt VERY uncharacteristic of ONE. I thought that the storyline with the Dragger was there to set up in advance that "Belief Power" was a thing, and so they were going to do something with that. Like have all that negative attention Reigen was getting make him a supervillain or something, but no that would have been too predictable. Of course, they continued all this nonsense JUST long enough to make the audience forget that whole shebang that happened in the previous season was still a thing, and THEN the time is ripe to bring it back, and mixed with the audacity of it, boy that's a spicy meatball.

[Cruxador]

Man, you guys are really in for something if/when the climax of the series gets adapted.

[Dunamisdeos]

I enjoyed the second season of Dragon Prince.

[Reelya]

Started rewatching Symphogear from the start before catching up the new ones. Here's the thing: a lot of the schlockier shows are actually a lot more fun to rewatch than the "critically acclaimed" stuff. For example, I could definitely rewatch Symphogear again in the future, but have 0% interest in seeing Madoka a second time.

BTW for anyone not sure whether they'd like Symphogear, watch this music video. If you like that you'd probably enjoy the show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpJp1pb08Z4

[Cruxador]

Symphogear is widely acclaimed too though. It's not like you're watching luck and logic, or smartphone isekai, or Majouka Koukou no Rettousei.

[Reelya]

BTW: update on the Alita movie, it's doing pretty well so far, having hit the $350 million that FOX insiders originally said was the break-even point, after only 18 days of screening. That's already double the entire box-office take of Ghost in the Shell 2017.

Notably, the international take from Alita is only $50 million behind Transformers spin-off Bumblebee, which has a 2-month head start, so it looks like Alita is going to end up doing a lot better than Bumblebee internationally, if not in the domestic USA market. The difference in how the critics treated both movies seems ... odd.

I'm still not sure what exact bone those reviewers had with Alita that they don't have with ones like Bumblebee. However, if you look at the Rotten Tomatoes critics reviews for Ghost in the Shell, then you can see you could transplant those exact quotes into the mainstream reviews of Alita, and they're nearly identical in tone. I can assure you the movies are nothing alike. Basically, the likely scenario is that they went in expecting this to be another Ghost in the Shell fiasco and didn't review it at all objectively. They came in pre-prepared with a stock list of "manga movie criticisms" and just peppered them around. One example is critics trying to equate the "whitewashing" in GiTS with Alita, clearly not understanding the "set in Japan" / "set in the USA" distinction between the series. Alita was always set in the continental USA in the manga.

To give you an idea of the critics anti-Alita spin, here's an article where the author acknowledges that Alita already made $350 million, but says that if Alita ends with $420 million (off a $170 million budget) it'll be "enough to avoid becoming an embarrassment" but then goes on to talk about LEGO Movie 2, which only made $150 million off a $100 million budget (despite having been out for longer), but not a word about that being a flop or an embarassment, when it's clearly tanked and lost them a shitload of money, putting any future Lego movies in jeopardy. So, even when Alita far exceeds expectations, they're still trying to talk it down by using glass-half-empty language like "avoid becoming an embarrassment" if it exceeds Fox's original expectations.

[Cruxador]

There's definitely a "it's for nerds so it sucks" impulse among a lot of reviewers, but I think it's more attributable to backroom pandering and deals than any universal perspective, whether out of apathy or not. Do y'all remember the gamergate controversy? One of the things that was discovered there was that the relevant critics had their group mailing list where they agreed on narratives to all share. Considering that Hollywood be like it do, it's hard to imagine they don't have similar systems for large and important reviewers.

[EnigmaticHat]

Its not backroom pandering I promise you that.  Movie reviewers are generally stuck up people who form a distinction between "popular" and "artistic" films.  They tried to make a new oscars category this year of "best popular film" pretty much only so they would have an excuse not to make Black Panther best film.  As opposed to whatever stupid oscarbait bullshit came out this year.  Its like the difference between "genre" books and "literature".

Also you and me remember gamergate very differently, where are you getting the mailing list thing?

[Egan_BW]

haha gamergate remember that what a blast from the past some of that retro eThICs iN GAmeS jOURnaliSm

[Karnewarrior]

All I remember about Gamergate is that it made 4chan even more autistic and toxic, and managed to birth a splinter site that makes even that new 4chan look like Tumblr.
So I hate it.

[IronyOwl]

Star Trek: Discovery vs The Orion was another interesting critic-fan divide. Fans were kinda meh about STD, critics hailed it as the second coming. Fans seemed to really like The Orion, critics decried it as godawful. Whether that was due to elitist snobbery or deep pockets I couldn't say (whynotboth.gif?), but it was kind of amusing to read scathing critic reviews insisting that "this is just Star Trek!!!" alongside happy fan reviews that "hey this is more Star Trek!"


In actual manga news, I've started reading Yuusha Ga Shinda! Haven't gotten very far, because I consume media at a glacial pace, but so far it's excellently absurd. The setup's pretty familiar- some irredeemable jackass gets saddled with the fate of the world- but it's wall-to-wall ridiculous. In particular, the author's really good at making the world silly alongside the heroes (well, "heroes"). Pretty much everyone and thing we meet is involved in something hilarious.

Interestingly, the humor and world are often fairly violent and dark, and the demon designs would definitely fit in a more serious work. I suspect the author was tempted to make an actual thing but either copped out or, more likely given how well done it is, couldn't stop giggling and decided to make it a comedy instead/also.


I've also been nibbling on Helck, which is also a comedy about demons with some serious parts but otherwise has very little in common. Ostensibly Helck is about a human on his way to becoming the Demon King, but it's mostly through the perspective of a particular cute demon elf trying to stop him, so it's almost more slice of life than adventure or something. It's also very fluffy and lighthearted, for the most part; the demons are motley basically-just-people-with-superpowers, for instance, and generally pretty cheerful and friendly at that.

[Flying Dice]

Its not backroom pandering I promise you that.  Movie reviewers are generally stuck up people who form a distinction between "popular" and "artistic" films.  They tried to make a new oscars category this year of "best popular film" pretty much only so they would have an excuse not to make Black Panther best film.  As opposed to whatever stupid oscarbait bullshit came out this year.  Its like the difference between "genre" books and "literature".

Also you and me remember gamergate very differently, where are you getting the mailing list thing?

Gamergate was all about the corruption of gaming journo sites to push specific narratives about different games (usually in pursuit of bribes from publishers), about the selling of positive scores and good spin for kickbacks and access deals. The whole gender blah blah who the fuck cares bit was a literal sideshow instigated by a pair of lying asshole exes in said community of gaming journo sites who tried to hijack outrage. This is why there's such a divide in perception about it: gamers who gave a shit about honest reviews cared about the ethics. Redpillers and SJWs cared about the stupid noise about muh misogyny muh SJWs blah blah fucking blah.