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Ikki's fights, skills and character.

@Pen I wonder what your opinion on Kung Fu Panda is

As much I like the movie, on paper it seems very close to what you described
 
I always love series that have a lot of unexplored potential because it provides so much material for discussion and creativity as you brainstorm how it could have gone.

It's why I love fate/Apocrypha and the second Twilight movie even though they were, respectively, a 5.5/10 and a 1.5/10 in terms of quality
 
Hmm on one hand it is definitely an underdog story and po should have logically lost to tai lung...Yet its doesn't take itself overly seriously and is more about a message of being true to yourself and having confidence iirc.

Hmm If I wanted to I could criticize and over analyze the plot and ideas given enough time but its a movie about a panda finding his place and proving himself. The story isn't a focus to the movie iirc and it writes off a bunch of things as that's just how it is. While I don't particularly enjoy the series due to it's tropes I can easily see why others would/do. (I cant deny the cg is smooth af)

So my verdict on kung fu panda, well made, good message, laden with tropes I dislike. (Probably would watch it over any Disney live action remake :p) Overall not for me.
 
Like I said Pen, the anti spirals aren't trying to protect a dead universe. They don't care about themselves in tbe long run, they aren't even happy about the stuff they've had to do, they do this because with no universe there's no life to be had. And in their eyes, a complete void without nothing is much worse than a hopeless life where you are still alive. Which is understandable when your race merely existing can bring about the end of the universe. Is a bit hard to cope with.

Not to mention, torturing is not a big idea. There's a reason why martyrs exist. Willpower literally shapes reality in Gurren Lagann, and even though what they are doing is already sort of a big gamble, things like torturing captives in front of Spiral Warriors is one way to **** up badly. You can either make people die down with that, or make them get roused up with many times the willpower, anger, energy and determination. Almost succeeding and failing is incredibly worse than just failing when it comes to killing your motivation.
 
So they don't care about themselves? Then why bother suppressing life in the first place? Just let it grow out of control and destroy reality. Rather then create a half ass system that will inevitably fail because your dealing with reality warping lifeforms. To me it sounds like they didn't have the guts to let the universe kill itself or wipe out the life forms creating these issues and thus they took a half measure that was doomed to fail.

Yeah Im not sure that covers them killing all simons friends, it seems like there best option was to go for the kill early, sure he might have gotten inspired from it but he also was just as likely to be consumed by despair. Holding the friends captive? He's eventually going to get them back, or keep hoping he can, know what he cant do? He cant get them back if they're dead. Show him their desiccated corpses, point out how they'd still be alive if he hadn't forced them to stand in the anti spirals way.

Edit: To be clear I don't dislike compromise but when the fate of the entire universe is on the line kinda seems like the wrong time to try and find a middle ground. Sorta the time for an all or nothing approach
 
So wait is the universe doomed? In Gurren Lagann they fight off the anti spiral correct? Doesn't that mean reality will eventually collapse due to the spread of helix based life forms?
 
The pen or the sword said:
So wait is the universe doomed? In Gurren Lagann they fight off the anti spiral correct? Doesn't that mean reality will eventually collapse due to the spread of helix based life forms?
Click to expand...
At the end of the series, the Anti-Spiral are defeated but the living spiral-based lifeforms come together in an intergalactic council, aiming to work together to all grow and be free but without destroying reality in the process. i.e. limiting their growth so they don't go out of control.

This is a really difficult (or perhaps even impossible) task, but to quote either the show itself or the unofficial 28th episode, "Don't ask for a lighter burden, ask for broader shoulders." They realize it's risky but they hope they can overcome that difficulty, and live better lives in the process.
 
Hmmm Intersting ending, they work together to avoid rending the universe apart, despite it being a near impossible task. though that leaves me with the question of why the anti spiral didn't attempt this in the first place? They were already unwilling to simply destroy the threat and took a half measure, why not attempt to help the spirals grow safely?

Warn them of the danger and try to guide them in peaceful growth. Supposedly they only saw futures where the spirals grew out of control but if they were unwilling to wipe them out fully and their plan to contain them was fundamentally flawed surely trying to guide them would have been the best option. Rather then holding them underground until they eventually broke free and worked to defeat the anti spiral.

edit I suppose you could argue they hadn't thought of it but that doesn't really work with there whole stick of being the conglomerate of an entire species.
 
Well thematically, the series is a bunch of nested "Oppresses the group below and keeps them in the dark" hierarchies, where the person oppressing always says "I'm doing this so you won't break free and end up dying", to which the protagonists say "I think we can overcome them, and even if we can't, we'd rather die free than live oppressed". Anti-spirals oppress the planets, on their planet a tyrant oppresses all the colonies, in each of the colonies an elder oppresses the individuals, the same argument could probably be made at all levels here imo.

And hell, this is meant to be a commentary on humanity to a certain extent. These parallels are more obvious with colony elders oppressing their colony and keeping them in the dark (sometimes through religion, sometimes through force, sometimes through authoritarianism), but since the same thing essentially happens all the way up to the Anti-spirals, it's not like these types of "justified oppression to protect from a greater evil" actions are unrealistic.

The Anti-spiral didn't think spirals could grow safely, and also obviously didn't think they'd be defeated, they had defeated thousands of similar colonies that had risen up to the strongest Anti-spiral before.
 
Hmm Fair thematically the chain of oppression is fascinating and the parallels that can be drawn to real world groups/events are definitely an interesting narrative tool.

Agnaa You've activated my trap card

See right there if they've been dealing with this a thousand times before...What about our protag is special? why does he out of the millions before him get to succeed? What makes his hope special? Why were the anti spirals unable to deal with him? did those before him not have enough hope? Why does he get to win against a millennia old alien race with superior resources, abilities and experience?

Either the anti spirals knew their system wasn't prefect and could fail, and chose to continue with there system despite the risk. Leading to the question of why bother/why not try something else, or our protagonist is somehow unique to the millions that died in vain before him and it somehow let him do what no other before him has.
 
"Either the anti spirals knew their system wasn't prefect and could fail, and chose to continue with there system despite the risk. Leading to the question of why bother/why not try something else, or our protagonist is somehow unique to the millions that died in vain before him and it somehow let him do what no other before him has."

Why would it be an either or tho? Simon would be doing something everyone else failed in regardless of whether the the Spiral considered the system perfect or not
 
Not gonna bother putting a spoiler warning for these episode 25 spoilers since you'll read them anyway.

When they were all at the graveyard where thousands before them had died, they were going to get sucked into the Spiral Field Death Generator; and so they aimed to destroy this generator.

This generator converts incoming mass into energy, which it uses to create a highly destructive field of space, but the protagonist's simulations discovered that if they shot a massive dose of Spiral Power into one point of that field it would disrupt the process, causing a localized collapse of the forcefield, letting them shoot in missiles in the newly-created gap.

Apparently this weakness exists as the Anti-Spiral didn't anticipate a group of people crazy enough to drive their ships right down to that ultra-dense space. However, even this plan failed as the space was more dense than anticipated, destroying their missiles. And so, one of the other protagonists went on a suicide mission flying in a double-layered spaceship, the first layer interrupted the barrier and was promptly crushed and destroyed, the second layer flew into the generator itself and destroyed it. There's an implication that this is done through the probability hax spiral beings can reality warp for, which in this case seemingly enabled them to perform this feat that had a 0% chance of succeeding.

After the generator was destroyed, all the spiral energy that had been turned into the forcefield over all the fights Anti-Spiral had over the aeons was released back into spiral power, which the protagonists absorbed and set them on the pathway to finally defeating the Anti-Spiral.

I say "set them on the pathway" because there's still 2 more episodes after that one.
 
Fair Im a bit fried at the moment so I could have worded that better. I meant for that to be a bit more of a seperate thought. If the spiral consider there system imperfect then I could see the claim it was a law of large numbers, it wouldn't make it good but it would be an explanation. It would also mean the spirals were aware their system could fail and they did nothing about it.

While if they thought it was perfect then simon breaks through a system that a super advanced race couldn't see failing.

Both answers are annoying in there own right....
 
(in case you missed it, I also replied, just before you made that post)
 
(Saw it, thanks for the message though Id hate to miss a reply!)

Wait the anti spirals left this weakness despite knowing there enemies were reality warpers that could make a zero precent chance possible? Why didn't they work to cover this up? Why did no one before them manage to manip that zero precent chance? Again why is our protag special in this scenario?

the anti spiral not believing someone being that crazy seems...Hard to buy, they know they are dealing with entities capable of warping reality via hope, why leave such a risk? In all there advance technology surely they could have designed a method to block off/defend this weakness
 
It seems to be an inexorable flaw in design. To not have that weakness they'd need to not have the generator at all, which seemingly would have been worse for them due to how useful it was in dispatching the others that came before them.

It's never given a direct explanation, but from what little we were shown of the fights others had attempted in the past, rather than going for the generator they simply worked to stay out of its reach and attempted to fight the Anti-Spiral directly, so the number of people who tried their strategy before would have been really small, and even when they tried it this time they did almost fail.

It could have also been a manpower issue for prior attempts, they had their two most productive spiral power dudes pumping it out and they couldn't warp their missiles to be strong enough to survive the dense space, then they had to have other dudes on top of it pump spiral power into the spaceship they sent down. And the hope that fuels spiral power isn't an endless supply, it's emotionally taxing, the protagonist did need to take a break from pumping out spiral energy at one point, and they were on a pretty tight time limit before they died. To reiterate, they needed a good amount of people able to rotate out their emotional reserves to pull this off, and even with a solid number of people, not everyone has the emotional capacity to do this sort of thing (even though a lot do, probably something like 10-20% of people, this isn't a unique "they're the only 2 people who can do it" thing).

In all there advance technology surely they could have designed a method to block off/defend this weakness

It was portrayed as a consequence of simply what the machine does, one of the engineers pointed out this flaw just open hearing it described, without seeing the design or simulating it (sorry, I phrased this in a bad way earlier).
 
Hmmm seems awfully convenient to me that this generator would have one vulnerable opening What is with advanced tech having one vulnerable opening? Who is the idiot in the back end of the universe that keeps designing these vulnerable openings! Seriously I need to have some words with him!

Moving on so its a design flaw and simon got lucky/tried something no one else had. It grinds on one of the plot points I dislike with them overcoming impossible odds that thousands before them failed to do.

I get why you'd like it and its great they added an explanation but honestly...Its one of those areas where I personally feel they should have died. Have the noble sacrafice be in vain, have the aliens contiue there iron rule, heck maybe have them design a new generator to never run the risk of that happening again.Take a more realistic look at a hyper advanced alien race desperatly trying to suppress a race of reality warpers.

(Allright Im starting to hit the wrong keys while typing so off I go, Good night all!)
 
It's not a vulnerable opening built into the system, it's something they have to actively open up themselves with a great deal of effort and risk. There's no hole already there, if that's what you were imagining.

Fair enough, but I think that sort of approach to a story is more fitting of a post-modern deconstruction type of story, rather than a post-post-modern reconstruction type of story like TTGL is.

Deconstructions break down commonly used tropes and explore how the genre's different when we break them down. Reconstructions acknowledge the existence of tropes, explore and explain them, but in the end still accept and incorporate them in a sincere manner while still being aware of the silliness pointed out through prior deconstructions.

Rather than "trope with no explanation" or "subverting trope that had no explanation" it gives an explanation to a trope and uses it anyway.

After exploring deconstructions I started finding reconstructions neat, and now I enjoy both of them.

gn
 
Oh yeah. For those curious, here's two videos comparing Rakudai with another very similar anime that aired at the same time, Asterisk War. These were compared heavily at the time as examples of trash LN adaptations, and those videos go into the history of why that is, and explores how Rakudai succeeded where Asterisk War failed, and how these bits of saving grace Rakudai had turned around public opinion on it.
 
As i've said before, those 2 are practically the same series, but Rakudai is actually done well.

And it's still number 1 in my Top 10 Anime Betrayals the fact that Asterix got a 2nd season while Rakudai didn't.
 
Andytrenom said:
I wonder if MHA can be considered a reconstruction work
Click to expand...
I haven't seen the show, so I can't really be sure, but from what I've seen and heard about it I think it could go either way. If the show's themes are more a comment on elitism as this video posited, then I think it'd simply be a strong, well-made show that isn't a deconstruction or a reconstruction, as it focuses more on its own story and society as a whole rather than it's own genre.

However, if the structure of the society is largely meant as a comment on/rationalization of other shounen/superhero shows, I think it could qualify as a reconstruction, even if it doesn't seem to heavily go into as many elements as other reconstructions I've familiar with.
 
I certainly saw it as a reconstruction for what it's worth. Though I'm usually not as interested in whether or not something is a decon/recon as much as it is a good story
 
For me MHA is just a Shounen, that does Shounen things, but actually attempts to do things better in the execution department.

Far as I've seen it hasn't really veered off course or tried anything crazy, just gone for pretty standard stuff but doing them in its own flavor. I really don't think it's trying to reconstruct or deconstruct, whatever seems like it may be a unexpected side effect.
 
I think the part that you don't understand fully here is the "all" implies everyone dies. Either all life dies, or there's always gonna be a chande for life to raise. But if the universe is dead, then what are the anti spirals protecting? A universe that is completely dead?

By all means, this a lose lose situation (in their eyes). They wanna stop the Spiral Death Nemesis because they don't want life and the universe to go, but they aren't in it to protect a bunch of empty rocks orbiting stars. Both options that imply no risk are either let spirals live and get ****** or kill them all and leave the universe barren. There's no logical solution here, and that's the issue.

As for the killing friends bit, Kamina had died and Simon just bounced back eventually, stronger than ever. More friends die combating the spirals, he gets even more driven. Someone else dies stoping the Death Spiral Machine and he gets his Willpower pushed to the maximum. Threatening or killing friends would have never worked, they already tried that and it only pumps them with morr energy and spiral power. The Ani Spirals were spirals themselves and had been doing this for millennia, they knew very well what they were doing. Simin just surpassed their expectations.
 
@Lance I think Pen's suggesting that by destroying all other life they'd be protecting themselves.
 
Yeah, maybe I didn't explain it well, but the Anti Spirals do all they do for the universe. It is a shitty situation, they aren't doing it for themselves. Their speech about how the willpower of the protagonist is paltry compared to their own when they stopped their evolution and murdered their comares just to safeguard what would remain of life ans the universe says as much.
 
What was your first clue? The fact I literally said it on a thread about discussing verses you don't like? Or the fact I listed myself as an opponent of the verse?
 
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