Eric The Red

Look, I agree that Season 3 was ass, but acting as if the first two seasons weren't the root of the problem is disingenuous. I did a whole post detailing why AF fucked up from the start.

They actually had the spine to commit to having the show grow up along with its audience.

1.) It grew up WAY too fast, since the kid audience who began watching in 2006 would absolutely not be the same age range as the characters in AF in 2008.

2.) Did "the show" grow up, or did an entirely different show that didn't really want to be a sequel to anything just pop up in its place? (I can answer that: the latter.)

it's been five years, Ben and Gwen have long since put their childish bickering behind them

That's the only part that's fine.

Vilgax is gone

Why? Where did he go? Did he just stop wanting the Omnitrix?

Kevin's reformed

Why? He was depicted as a vengeful, misanthropic sociopath! How did he change?

there're totally new main villains

Which is fine on its own, but phasing out damn near the entire old Rogues Gallery isn't.

Max is (mostly) gone

Who did not need to "die" to be so, especially not in the stupid way it happened.

the stakes are very real

As if they weren't before???

Ben has more or less fully learned how to control the Omnitrix and matured into a competent and responsible young man, a leader even.

OK, show's over then. You just had Ben reach the natural CONCLUSION of his character arc, at the very beginning of AF, meaning he has nowhere left to go without being a boring main character. Regressing him sucked, but the only other option they had was either not continue the series or they get a new main character. Maybe if they had held off on maturing him until we actually got to WATCH him mature in real time, episode after episode, they'd have been in a better spot (similarly, if we had gotten to SEE Kevin redeem himself instead of handing him an insta-good guy badge, the fuckery that went down with him could have been avoided.)

and like i said everyone who enjoys this game must truly give hina her flowers because she is simply glorious during this chapter. like on a baseline, trying to commit what is essentially a murder-suicide because your girlfriend died and you believe yourself and everyone around you to be responsible is awesome. the fact that, when everyone else thought of sakura as a traitor, hina alone stood by her side, loyal to the end. the reveal that sakura thought of everyone as her friends, even when they hated her. maybe even when they tried to kill her. she was so selfless she sacrificed herself so everyone could stop fighting, and she was happy to do it, the exact opposite of a traitor. if i were hina, i would feel resentment as well! it's genuinely heart-rending! and there's something crazy to witness about hina, who has mostly been the bubbly upbeat genki girl, whose anger has always been righteous, just losing it in desperation as she gets found out. she is voiced by the one and only cassandra lee morris so of course she is good but jesus what a performance. ("it's over." "nothing's over! i did it! i killed sakura!") nobody ever acknowledges it because her personality is remarkably different and she is not very calm or collected or cunning, but in this vein she is almost exactly like kokichi or nagito, playing the mastermind villain to lead the group to a conclusion she believes is right. (though naturally kokichi is far more heroic than hina is being and nagito is... far beyond those two in terms of being cuckoo bananas).

her final suicide note is such a hit as well! the pain of hina falling for the fake suicide note that led her down her path of fury! i love how the game never, ever tries to villainize hina for what she does, even if it's objectively wrong. she's just a girl who lost her best and dearest friend, after days of witnessing her being suspected and ostracized by everyone around them. "i'd rather be dead than alone." but even with sakura gone she was not alone. sakura died so she wouldn't have to be alone. i'm sure that's what she realised after reading the real suicide note, just like how everyone else in the cast realised the folly of their behaviour in regards to how they treated sakura. sakura, who does not fit the mold of a typical dainty conventionally attractive girl, who was treated as an invulnerable object they could attack simply because she was physically strong, was just as human as the rest of them, and hina was the only one who recognised that. She had weaknesses, just like any other person. If she got cut, she bled. If someone hurt her, she felt it. That's weakness... that's normal...!

hina was perfect for sakura not because she recognised her strength—after all, everyone knew sakura was strong—but because she recognised her weakness. this alllll loops back into the overall plot the depth of sakura and hina's relationship tied into the theme of kyoko and byakuya and what it means to be truly intelligent, and it's flawless really. and in the end, this chapter also proves kyoko as one of the best detectives to ever do it, simply because of this dialogue of hers:

You still haven't realised? We don't all act according to calculations and cost-benefit diagrams. That's what makes us so complicated. That's what you don't understand, and that's why you couldn't solve this case. ... See? Didn't I tell you? When you dismiss other people's feelings, it'll always come back to bite you in the end.

and it's why it frustrates me when people portray kyoko as someone who cannot understand human emotion. she's quite the opposite. she has emotional issues herself, but that doesn't change the fact that she knows humans, and she knows humanity.

In Goodbye Despair, each killer's execution highlights their relationships with others and the amount of sacrifice they put in for their sake. Teruteru's fried like his mother's humble diner food, Peko lets herself die to shield Fuyuhiko, Mikan is sent hurtling towards Junko, Gundham stands his ground so the devas can live, Chiaki attempts to break through the program to save Usami and the others.

In Killing Harmony, each killer's execution is centered around their SHSL title and how their devotion is what brings them to death. Kaede's used to play a piano until it suffocates her, Kirumi goes through torture to escape to a duty that doesn't exist, Korekiyo's executed with antiquated torture methods, Gonta is stung and stabbed through by massive mutated bugs, Kaito is sent into space, and Tsumugi is squashed within the death of the killing game.

As much as I like Ned the character he is based off of belongs to Miles Morles and is unnecessary for Peter Parker's storyline. The role of best friend/confidant/co-conspirator should have gone to Mary Jane just like in the "Ultimate Spider-man" comic books that the MCU Spider-Man is clearly based on but doesn't follow through with. Mary Jane would use her intelligence to help him as well as her acting skills when it comes to creating diversions so he could sneak away.

Spider-Man is what brings them together but Peter Parker is the one that Mary Jane has always had a secret crush on but he has never payed any attention to her before. It would be a slow burn, friends to lovers situation. "The Blip" could have played a huge part in helping Peter realize his feelings for Mary Jane rather than just liking her without any preamble other than just because the plot calls for it like in FFH.

If only John Watts had actually read a comic book in his life or actually cared about the orignal material. If only the women weren't so poorly written and that this iconically complex female character wasn't reduced to a shadow and turned into a wannabe character from "The Breakfast Club".

Wait a minute, we already have that.

On top of all that, I think it’s a shame why we need to bring Ernesto back into the story in general bc the world here is so interesting. I’m sure there are a ton of cool stories they could tell with these characters without having to bring back the defeated villain.

I dunno, I’ll still go see it because I see every pixar movie in theaters. I love Coco so much I just really want this to do it justice and be worth it to add a sequel to a perfect stand alone movie.

Watching The Little Mermaid at 8: "Yeah, you tell him, Ariel!"

Watching The Little Mermaid at 24: "Yes you are, you are literally a teenager, you are a child."

Okay, so like. If I'm understanding right, it all went like this?

-> Emeraude is the Pillar of Cephiro and because Cephiro is a world where will shapes reality, the Pillar's task is constantly praying for the stability and harmony of Cephiro. This keeps the land peaceful and prosperous and prevents monsters from being formed from the fears and negative feelings of the denizens.

-> Emeraude fell in love with her high priest Zagato and became unable to fulfill her duty because her mind wasn't focused on preserving the harmony of Cephiro. It was focused on Zagato's sexy chin. Cephiro began to crumble and monsters started to form.

-> Realizing that she was now too thirsty to fulfill her role as the Pillar, Emeraude summoned off-worlders to kill her. Which I assume would allow her to then be replaced as Pillar? She can't just step down and promote an underling?

It has to be off-worlders because Emeraude is metaphysically incapable of self-terminating and the denizens of her world all adore her too much to go through with it. She needs complete strangers to knife her in an alleyway.

-> Zagato found out she did that and went "FUCK NO YOU DIDN'T" and then kidnapped her so he could keep her safe.

-> And so this entire time we've been trying to "save Emeraude from Zagato", he and his followers have in fact been trying to protect Emeraude from the Magic Knights. This whole time.

Forgive me for being a little late with this news; I haven't been checking in with Riichi City as much lately.

Even though I've never known Riichi City to rerun previous events before, Mahjong Ronpa is currently rerunning within the Riichi City game.

This originally ran in the summer of 2024, and it presented a unique story where four characters from DR1 are flung into the world of Riichi City... and oddly enough, by the end of the story? They stay there.

I, of course, tried my hardest to get Makoto Naegi this time around.

However, I only wound up with Junko (okay, not bad) and a duplicate Kyoko Kirigiri.

OR consider that maybe, just maybe, the “Ally Sheedy from the Breakfast Club” personality is this version of MJ’s equivalent to the ditzy carefree hippie party girl personality that Mary Jane started out with - a social front, a facade, the “mask” she puts on to keep an emotional distance between her and other people. And that the whole point is that, just like with Mary Jane, we come to find out that this isn’t the real MJ, who is uncovered through further interactions with Peter. That, rights-related name change aside, this is still very much a modernized take on Mary Jane (since the hippie party girl facade is, let’s be real, dated.)