Togawa Sakiko Mental Problems Stan Account

Such a crazy episode that I largely don't mind that Kouta the anglerfish person is apparently a boy or that we're teasing a het ship for Lara again (this is maybe my one gripe with the show and I don't really get what purpose it's serving, but I will keep letting them do their work). (I guess following on my harebrained theory from last time maybe we're going to do a metaphorical "wedding" followed by a "breakup"? I have no idea. I'm not a theorycrafter.)

But yeah hey Lisa's backstory. It's awful! If I had been put in a literal glass tank objectification box for god knows how long I would hate humans too! Frankly I think she has better justification than a lot of fictional characters!

There is some irony though to the fact that, of course, as someone who's been living in the human world for a *lot* longer, Lisa's inarguably better at "being human" in most senses of the term than Lara is, something I'm sure she deeply resents.

My dominating opinion for most of my time watching this was, more than being good or bad, that this is a goddamn *weird* movie. Like, narratively it's not *that* out there, we're doing a fantasy thing with some superhero / magical girl trappings, but the way it's presented is odd, not in style (which has obvious predecessors including Utena and Madoka Magica among others) but form. The pacing here is very strange, and I often got the impression I was watching the cut-down movie edit of a series or something of that nature as opposed to a film that was originally made for that format already. I suspect some part of this may be due to Ribbon Hero's relationship to The Princess Knight, the Osamu Tezuka manga that it is....based on? Early trailers were kind of vague about this and instead used the term "inspired by." Glancing at the cast list tells me some of the main characters have clear analogues in this film while others don't, but the plots seem extremely dissimilar going by an equally-cusory look at a summary of the general concept. This in spite of the fact that a scene late in the movie attempts to frame the film's story as a meta-origin for the Princess Knight concept itself. (Something that I cannot imagine endeared this movie to the Tezuka fans who were against it from its very announcement, a surprisingly large contingent if social media is any reliable indicator.) So I think they kind of expect you to have done the homework so to speak here, which is a little unfortunate mainly in that I haven't.

Despite this feeling of the movie going over my head despite its thematic simplicity, I would say I more enjoyed myself than didn't. Another aspect of the movie being very weird is, again, its obvious influences in terms of the last few generations of metatextual shoujo stories. Without the context of Princess Knight itself, it almost feels more like an homage to those than anything to do with the manga it's based on. Disappointing though this might have been if I were a huge Princess Knight fan, I am not, so I was taken by the film's attempts to engage in big, bold concepts. Sometimes these really click (most of the fight scenes inside the Nergal world or the Nergal themselves are excellent) and sometimes they whiff, but trying at all is worthwhile when you're trying to do something this specific. (There's also clearly some language in common with Plantopia, a 4-minute music video that is the main other thing I know director Igarashi Yuuki for.)

The wild swings are a good thing, because if I'm judging this on like, character arcs or something, it falls rather short. Only our main heroine Sapphire and her transgender-as-fuck rival Velvet really get one and both are extremely broad. In terms of character dynamics these two and Sapphire's girlbestfriend Pine (who seems to have no direct equivalent in PK itself) carry the film pretty hard.

Also! Rather than being voiced by a traditional seiyuu, Sapphire is voiced by comedian and musician Saya. This is all well and good in theory, but Saya is not a particularly great voice actress, she kind of plays all of her lines in the same way. In more comedic or action-oriented scenes this sort of works in the film's favor as it gives Sapphire an everygirl sort of charm even if she's obviously not an everygirl in any way. (Saya's voice, or at least the voice she uses for the character, is sort of boyish and flat, which suits a character like Sapphire.) But in the couple of scenes that call for Sapphire to be like loudly sad or such, it just sounds ridiculous, and I kind of can't imagine her ever having a successful career as a VA if this is all she can do. The rest of the voice cast acquit themselves nicely though. Including VTuber Tsukino Mito, inexplicably also here and voicing Hecate, one of Sapphire's friends. Also good but less surprisingly so (since she's a legend) is Shintani Mayumi as Zirco.

I feel like over the past couple of episodes we've seen Lara progress through the stages of a human lifetime with varying levels of literality, from her metaphorical birth (and literal rebirth) into the human world, a sort of adolescence where she learns about the basic concepts of the world, the whole school thing, and now an entire episode where she's a "working young adult." Which, I mean, Christ, I've rarely seen my own experiences with the difficulty of finding (let alone holding) work as a neurodivergent adult so accurately reflected in fiction, intentionally or otherwise. This episode really hit something inside me that I haven't thought about in a long time, a long period of living your life in a legal limbo will distance you from what "normal" work life looks like in a way that is unpleasant entirely unto itself, but I see Lara working at the bakery here and I immediately see myself working at Wegman's. (Not an experience that ended with as many valuable life lessons for me as it did for her, but still.)

Which I mean assuming this framework is real and I'm not just seeing things, makes me *very* worried about the end of this episode! Lisa is against her increasing integration with humankind, which is somehow causing that giant floating stone fish thing to act up, and maybe just killed one of Lisa's own....companions? We know precious little about Kota so far.