#amphiaria

Yeah, I’m going to need to have a longer pick at this, because there’s definitely things to be said here. The car in the series seemed to be a combination of a false promise of freedom, what with Akio scooping people up into it as though he was going to save them and instead just twisting them deeper into his game, and a vague sexual metaphor, just given how weirdly charged it was and his continual half-stripping.

Here, we definitely have some sexual metaphor-- good gracious, that key-- but the fact that Shiori was self-driving and Wakaba was just giving some friends a lift muddles that. Maybe it has more to do with power, with Shiori using what power she has solely for herself and thus crashing and burning, Wakaba using her love for her friends to help them out, and Utena and Anthy turning their blazing love into a revolution...?

Yeah, I can kind of see that, though also she explicitly dated Touga in the movie so I don’t want to read her too much as a little sister figure... but yeah, I am very much seeing the series and movie versions of these characters as separate people.

I’d believe it, yeah-- I think I even mentioned that the dragon-horse heads were probably meant to be horses as a White Knight idea. I think I remember someone telling me that the thing with them on horses in armour was planned for the series at first but never really ended up happening?

I do think she got the short end of the stick, sort of simplified to be an easier villain. I’m not sure it would have been possible to avoifd that entirely-- it’s a pretty short movie-- but it is a shame. And poor Nanami! I miss her! I miss my troublesome daughter!

This is wild. I did notice a few scenes being pretty strobe-y, especially Anthy with the swords in those last two episodes, but luckily for me I’m not super sensitive to that... it’s always wild, what new things we discover with developing technologies.

Shit you weren’t kidding that was fantastic.

And yeah, Shiori does seem to have been... simplified. I wasn’t really holding out hope for them reconciling in the series either, to be honest, but it’s definitely out of the picture here. I just want Juri to get to grow up and move on....

I thought it was great!

amphiaria replied to your post “Everyone who said they thought it was not good does NOT have the same...”

THANK you

*spoilers ahead*

I mean, GOYA REFERENCES???? Slow, building tension? The idea that what eventually drives a good girl to monstrosity is her treatment as she becomes a woman, and a realization that her virtue will not protect her from evil, for evil is all in belief and not fact? All of this works for me on an incredible level, I really like what I call THOUGHTFUL horror, where it’s not so much about jumping out of your skin, but about what do we mean by the monstrous. 

Horror is SO individual. 

Like I know a lot of horror people like Japanese horror, and that’s great, but a lot of Japanese horror involves ghosts just being pissed off, and so it rapidly becomes a rote series of killings. BUT, they ARE very creepy, extremely atmospheric. I just find them to not really make me think “What was that about?” 

Or like, slashers, which do nothing for me but are an IMMENSELY popular genre. 

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It’s been so long, it’s hard to believe I’m saying...

I personally would’ve really liked SOME sense of closure between steven and the memory of his mother, his diamond half, her portrait… like I understand why it didn’t happen but that’s the kind of emotional release that I had been waiting for and that’s why the finale didn’t really stick for me. I’m also not wild about the way jasper was handled but that’s really nothing new

Yeah, on some level I don’t think realistically that’s something Steven’s ever going to get closure on. He can’t actually confront Rose, because she’s gone, and he can’t stop having complex, conflicted feelings about his anger surrounding her, because she was a complex being and he knows that. I think it’s pretty clear he’s never going to stop being angry at her (cuz like, he has a right!) and unfortunately, therefore at some of the parts of himself that were shaped by what she left behind- but yeah, the finale might have worked better if the show had hit on that more- that he had accepted on some level closure was impossible before, but it’s something that will still hurt and require addressing even as life moves on.

Jasper is really hard to unpack, and I don’t have the energy there because I don’t like her that much, but yeah,they didn’t really strongly indicate whether she’d be able to find a way to help herself, which I’m sure sucks for her fans. It seems like on some level she’s starting to realize she needs to at least, and I think it was a good conclusion for the show to reach that Steven can’t really help her too much at this point, due to the fact he IS connected to her baggage whether he likes it or not and its clear their mutual baggage actually conflicts VERY BADLY- it’s not healthy for Steven to be around someone who would see ever see him as an authority figure or value him for his strength and feed into those ‘my diamond’ issues, since that clearly legitimately triggers the fuck out of him, and doesn’t help Jasper either.Steven can’t help everyone was kinda the moral of this bit, and that’s an important moral.

i drew this today based on events in last week’s CoC game, when @amphiaria‘s derry was extremely cool and good with a gun