#krolb

ooo is so good! like. secondary riders, good! date’s arc! gotou’s arc! supporting cast, good! hina’s arc! chiyoko! satonaka! shingo had few scenes but you can tell he’s good & kind! villains, good! kazari wants to be whole! mezool wants tenderness! gamel wants to stay with mezool! uva just wants to survive! the greeed aren’t people but have people like motivations! dr maki is evil but his motives are understandable?! ooo, good.

second rider is decade? saw a few eps? natsumi-tsukasa-yusuke dynamic is good! my third rider is w, saw under half, casino ep moment! akiko @ phillip: “shotarou’s worried about you, you idiot! he’s your partner right?! trust him more!” GOOD. third rider is gaim, i’ve read that it’s horrible & wanted to see it for myself, glutton for punishment, saw barely half, but it was good-ish? worried it’ll get worse, thinking about just starting from grandpa and going from there

I did watch OOO! Yasuko Kobayashi has a real solid strength in writing character-driven narratives. She’s super into adding a lot of nuance & fleshing out motivations in a way that’s intuitive to understand, even if it’s not necessarily predictable or expected! It’s just very satisfyingly messy, especially the idea of ‘selfishness through selflessness’. How compelling!

The atmosphere she cultivates has a lot of impact; even though it’s been long enough that I don’t really remember OOO that clearly, I absolutely agree with you on the greeeds. I remember there was never any feeling of straightforward triumph in their defeat, there was always something that dragged it towards A Complicated Vibe. I also remember really loving Gotou’s arc, and how Date influenced him— Gotou going like ‘I can’t believe I was naive enough to think I could save the world’ but never actually giving up on trying to make a difference, the way he became less rigid & inflexible, it was a really good trajectory.

(I don’t know if you’re also into sentai, but I got to know her writing through Ressha Sentai ToQger. It’s a really fun one! Kobayashi also was a head write for KR Den-O, and further back, KR Ryuki which almost killed the franchise lol. Nowadays Ryuki’s looked on very fondly, though, it just changed up a lot of stuff)

What’s really nice about Kobayashi is that since she’s, well, A Woman, she gives a lot of consideration to her female characters. I love W (and I mean, I *love* W), but the head writer really shafts the gals (in particular, Wakaba and Saeko). There’s just a lot that could’ve been explained/expanded/explored that just gets left unaddressed, but like. the other stuff is good enough to make up for it. W, overall, is a little messy with regards to how the overall plot shakes out, but the character dynamics and the execution of the individual mystery arcs are just So Good that it’s a strong series. It’s just very enjoyable! I don’t know if you’ve gotten to this part yet, but if you like how OOO handles character conflict, the Nobody’s Perfect arc really Hits That Vibe.

I was halfway done with writing this long rant before remembering you weren’t done with Gaim so oops I’m gonna try and minimize spoilers. Also, if you’re a Gaim stan, please, skip this. Also, if you don’t actually want Gaim Assessment, feel free to skip, I’m just saying why I, Personally, Did Not Like It.

Honestly? Gaim was enjoyable in the beginning when it actually had moments to establish characters and relationships. I’m extremely biased against Gaim because I see Urobuchi as dime-store Kobayashi; Gaim’s focus is primarily on worldbuilding + plot, but at the detriment of his characters. Urobuchi uses characters as vehicles for plot and for his pseudo-philosophical ramblings, but because characters are clearly treated as an afterthought, a lot of impact is lost. He’s too busy setting up a fake language that ISN’T TRANSLATED IN THE SHOW SO YOU HAVE TO GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO FIND OUT WHAT FOLKS ARE SAYING FOR *ENTIRE* *SCENES* to actually follow through with character development he doesn’t really set up. As you go further into the series, subplots and character arcs disappear and reappear in a span of 15 episodes. Consistency tends to be left offscreen. Kaito in particular seems to have two contradicting attitudes that swap out intermittently— I still remember that one episode where he says “what about the lives you ruined!” and then, five minutes later, “The Weak Deserve To Die.” There’s a Kaito that wants to be strong because only the strong can oppose the strong, and a Kaito that wants to be strong because being weak is unforgivable. These attitudes COULD work within one character, but not how it’s executed here. It’s very frustrating.

Even more frustrating is that, for all the conflict, there isn’t really development. In terms of Gaim I guess you could say Urobuchi worked in cycles, which *may* be an attempt at a poignant ‘same yet different’ end, but That Doesn’t Work if there’s a lack of consistency or if there’s mostly off-screen establishment. Was Oren always approaching this with a ‘tough love’ type of thing, or did he gradually become fond of the cast and realize they were kids that should be protected? How much does his mercenary background actually inform his attitude? eh. Does Youko have any motivations that extends beyond following ‘strong leaders’ (which are always dudes, huh)? no.

And let’s go into larger themes. “Strength” is of particular interest, Gaim is preoccupied with what strength means, whether strength is an inherently corrupting force, what can be considered strength, but. Ok I guess this is a spoiler, but every time Kouta gets stronger, it’s because a weapon upgrade is handed to him. There’s nothing interesting about the weapons upgrade. In OOO, there’s the purple medals that push Eiji to develop in a way that enables him to use them. In Gaim, there’s. ugh. Someone hassles Kouta about philosophy, he’s like ( ･᷄_･᷅ ) and then someone gives him a weapon. But there’s the ghost of development, of forward momentum, except it’s never realized outside one microcosm of action because the second Kouta feels secure about a decision, madoka man throws out traumatic realizations like cheap cigars in a way that keeps Kouta in development limbo. it becomes predictable and blasé.

Okay this is getting too long, bottom line, if you’re not character focused you might get more enjoyment out of it (even though plot+worldbuilding falls to the wayside just as much as characters in the last third or so of the series).