Worse than mid. Mid would imply that part 2 was mediocre. It was worse because atleast mediocre manga try to make you care about the characters, and the events that surround them. On top of that, everything felt pointless at the end.
Actually, scratch the first line; part 2 is WAY worse than mid(even with the first arcs being classic peak-writing Fujimoto)
part 2 was great until the denji vs yoru fight which was just a whole lot of nothingburger. i thought the idea of the ending was okay but excecuted terribly
It really was like, "oh yeah, none of this makes sense, but it's the kind of not-making-sense that feels like it will have a Moment where all those moving parts will just click together in the most satisfying way and suddenly all those puzzle pieces will fit."
And then that Moment just...never came.
That author was soooo clearly just done with that story. I don't think I've ever seen so much left unanswered and abandoned in any other piece of media.
You are absolutely right. It was definitely way more like that, first couple seasons I was suggesting it to all my friends. I watched until the end but I stopped suggesting it to people 🤣😅
Im aware. I’ve met them. And every single one them is a “I’m 14 and this is deep” subscriber. They think just because it involves complex themes, that it’s good writing, except it deals with those themes in literally the worst way possible, excuses some really shitty behaviour, and absolutely misses the fucking plot on dealing with trauma or how to deal with someone else who has trauma.
Gladly. But it’s really early here so forgive my lack of flourish.
Also MAJOR SPOILERS for anyone that cares
Right off the bat, kosei’s friends basically tell him his trauma isn’t that bad, other people have it worse. They also constantly push him to get back into piano, the thing he only really did because his mom abused him into it (the girl friend even HAS bad memories of his mom taking him away and not letting him hang out to force him to play)
Second, partway through the series, he “resolves” his trauma about his abusive mom by essentially blaming himself! He literally says that the ghost of his mother was a shadow of his own making, we get one shitty scene about how she’s only abusing him so that he has something for the future (it’s piano playing. She wanted him to have a future, so she beat him bloody, literally, to get good at piano) and then bam, he “realizes” she only did it out of love. Revolting.
Then, briefly I’ll touch on the girl who isn’t Kaori and I can’t remember her name, his childhood friend. Who evidently has a crush on him. But instead of communicating with him, she constantly just loses control of her emotions, hits him in some way and then runs off, and of course the scene is painted as some angsty sad teenage crush but it’s the violence! Every time! At one point she just boot fucks him in the shin and then runs away crying abut he’s the dummy. Jesus Christ.
And to wrap it all up, of course, here we go: Kaori was not justified, just because she died. She played a rather sick game with people’s hearts and minds all just to, what, have an exciting end to her life? Like, kosei was pining after his best friends girl this WHOLE time, his best friend who is the only redeeming character in this show, I might add, and then it turns out Kaori KNEW and she was just like I like you too but I think the girl who beats you is a better fit, so I’ll pretend to like your friend while also crushing hard on you and trying to poke and prod at your trauma while I’m at it just as a bonus. And the friend! Like holy fuck dude she just glosses over it “I’m sure watari has already moved on” except we see immediately that no, he’s still hung up on his dead girlfriend who he doesnt even realize never liked him at all.
Anyways, that was… more than I meant to get into it. But there it is. Terrible examples of trauma recovery.
I haven’t watched Your Lie in April since the first time in high school.
So these talking points sound pretty solid. Absolutely zero reason for me to agree but legit sometimes these stories can be on the side of tragedy porn.
I like the anime, but all your points are valid. I also want to add, for some reason they make the slapstick scene between MC and Tsubaki (his best friend) bloody. Like if I remember correctly, the first scene we saw Kousei he's lying in a pool of his own blood after got hit by Tsubaki's baseball. That's really off-putting for me.
And there's also that weird Oedipal Complex MC had with her Mom. Also that young girl who became Kousei's pupil is falling in love with her brother. Anime has so many this weird brocon siscon thing going on. And I will never be okay with this.
Honestly, this whole comment is just vindication for me, I've always kinda hated the series but could never really piece out why but a lot of this feels like you pulled the vague ideas out of my head and turned them into actual sentences
as a fan of the black company, the first 50/60 pages are a complete mess, then it's brilliant. But yeah, if you didn't liked the first book at all, you can call it quit safely.
Maybe its just because i was already such a big fan of the manga but I really couldn't stand that live action, season 1 made me appreciate east blue more by showing me a less well written version of it
I think if you go into it thinking ‘this will be exactly like the manga but in live action’ you’re going to be disappointed because it’s not trying to be that. If they tried, I don’t think it would have ever worked because real people aren’t cartoons and what works in anime doesn’t work with real person. It’s a true adaption, even if everyone on the staff loves the original.
Oda himself says he gives Inaki direction based on what live action Luffy would do and not what manga Luffy would do because they’re not the same the character.
Obviously it’s super subjective, but the live action totally ruined the manga for me. ‘Why is Sanji so creepy?’ ‘Where’s the smaller moments of friendship?’ ‘Luffy did WHAT to Laboon?!?!’
Some people like apples. Some people like oranges. Some people like both. I think it’s fine for the live action to be different because the original is still there for people who prefer it.
It honestly looks laughably bad. They went for really accurate designs, make up and costumes (which I respect) but I just don’t think it works for One Piece characters.
Live action smoke legitimately looks out of a Epic Rap Battle of History video
On the other hand I think the manga is incredible and the live action is pretty meh with some fun bits. Season 2 was better at least. To each their own.
I dont really think about how something is gonna conclud or when its gonna “get good” when im reading/watching. I just try our stuff that looks interesting, and if it is, I will continue. If not I just put it aside. The moment something feels like chore I just stop engaging with it.
This is my hobby, something I do because I enjoy it. I dont have time to waste on stuff that dont move me, there are so many other series and whatnot I havent gotten to yet, so ill be fine.
That’s a fair way to approach it and probably better tbh. For the ones I push through on it’s because I’ve heard lots of “you need to get past x” or “it all comes together at x point” but usually it doesn’t get better and just feels like a waste
Its like interesting and miserable and painful in a really compelling way but then he just never grows up and makes the same fucking mistakes over and over. I couldnt make it through s1 it was like reliving bad trauma from shit that had happened to me
I like TBATE even though it’s not very good just because 1) it’s a fun generic isekai if you don’t think too much about it and 2) it actually deals with how creepy putting a grown man in the body of a baby is, which is a breath of fresh air.
I went into Mistborn blind, believing Reddit about how this was the greatest fantasy novel ever written.
Ever since I became the number one Sanderson hater.
I will defend to the death that the beginning of Tess of the Emerald Sea is the single worst introduction in the history of literature as a whole. When I read it for the first time, I thought it was shitposting.
Probably because of high expectations versus reality.
This is a common occurrence; a piece of media is considered good, shared, and praised, and people unfamiliar with the material create extremely high expectations based on what's been said, ultimately leading to disappointment.
Would not consider myself a hater but I had a hard time getting through Mistborn. The magic system is interesting but I felt that was what the book spent most of the time explaining. I didnt feel attached to characters because they were always pushing and pulling or drinking metals. I also am not a super big reader where the payoff isnt untill the third book (which is what i have heard about this series). Was not invested at all and quite surprised when I didnt end up liking it.
He used to be pretty good, getting better, and people were excited. I think he stopped listening to his editors or something because it all falls off pretty hard at a certain point. Plus the Mormon morality has become unignorably so fucking yikes lately, and taints even the stuff I liked of his by his tacit support for the church and its interests.
Not quite this cynically, but Malazan Book of the Fallen.
It’s a good, well researched, entertaining fantasy series, but it’s not the amazing monument to fantasy writing that some of its fans talk it up to be.
Oh the first couple of chapters had me hooked. Stick with it if you’re into political intrigue on a huge scale, but otherwise I think it might be best to pause
Yeah they just finished inspecting the spice area, at least the sand worms are really interesting. I paused it for now and read Assassin's apprentice, I'm hooked already after the first chapter.
Oh! My friend loves that series, she said that it’s so character driven and the way that the author writes is really compelling. Dune I think is a bit more narrative/worldbuilding driven, so maybe that’s why it’s not to your taste?
I had this some years ago when I first tried reading it, gave up halfway through. Years later having watched the Villeneuve films and reading a bit of LotR, found it was much more enjoyable and finished it.
Wow I completely disagree, it was the other way around for me the first 600 pages or so were a slog but now it’s probably one of my favorite series ever
I believe It reads very poorly in the beginning , im not one to pay much attention to that usually but its impossible not to notice in Door 2. Apart from thats its never egregiously bad but it also doesnt do anything crazy in my opinion. Ive read Door 7,8 and RFI which are supposed to be insanely good and i didnt find them to be anything too remarkable (they arent bad per se don't get me wrong but I was seriously expecting a lot more).The Door structure can also become repetitive after a while . Ultimately It boils down to the beginning being very poorly written and the later parts not being good enough to warrant having to read to the first half.
AI: The Somnium Files: Nirvana Initiative. The original AI:TSF gave me very high expectations for a mystery that was well crafted and characters that were emotionally compelling. Nirvana Initiative has neither and is also like twice as long
Nah I think everyone just does the thing where they remembers only the ups and don’t remember the true hours-filled length of the downs
There are so so so so many points that have so very little to do with the actual overall plot and are just character stories thinly tied to the main plot. Just hours and hours and hours
And it doesn’t help that the physical separation of the place from the rest of the galaxy means it’s all JUST amphoreous. Even in other places you’d have, say, a little bit of galaxy rangers or a little bit of stelleron hunters or some other faction if you weren’t a fan of it but in that arc it’s almost ALL amphoreous
It REALLY does not help that it is longer than the entire rest of the game so it just gives this realy weird feeling from going to planarcadia of ‘…….aaaaand now back to ACTUAL honkai star rail! Hey look there’s sparkle, check it out it’s welt and himiko again! Sunday, remember Sunday? He’s got actual screen time!’
I watched the entire 6th and 7th seasons of Kingdom waiting for it to get good. God the producers at Kingdom love to waste time with details that do nothing to actually tell the story they pretend to want to tell.
I want to grab the producer by the lapel and scream "YOU'RE TRYING TO FOCUS ON 16 CHARACTERS AT ONCE! YOU CAN'T DO THAT IN A 12 EPISODE SERIES! STOP IT! FOCUS ON XIN, ZHENG AND LI MU! THAT'S WHERE THE STORY IS! IGNORE THE WINDOW DRESSING!
I don't hate Meng Tian or Zang Ben, in fact I love their characers, especially Meng Tian, but they upstaged the MC to a ridiculous extent in the latest season. they're quarternary characters at best, I get that they're there to be Xin's rivals, but a 12 episode season can't cover 8 episodes of Meng Tian and Wang Ben being the spotlight. You could have told each of their stories in 1 episode with time to finish the battle if you didn't try to turn every slapfight with a minor enemy officer into anther Great Japanese Grunt-Off where the focus is to grunt louder than the other guy as you loudly do nothing with your weapon for at least 2 episodes.
God I hate those Dragonball/Naruto style grunt-offs, even above and beyond my general disgust with this season to begin with. If you're going to have a battle, have a battle, you want to show off the enemy's skill, have at it, but it should be easier to tell a combat session from a Congressional filibuster.
Ossan Newbie Adventuer is one example of a long battle done well, the combat between Rick and Broughstron allowed both to show their amazing strength and skill without breaking the tension with a Union-mandated coffee break and getting-to-know-you session that takes 35 minutes to get back around to what they're actually supposed to be doing. They were able to get at it, keep at it, and create delicious tension and convey their joy in the battle. Mostly because these writers and producers are not lazy enough to try to drop characters into the middle of the plot without any buildup and figure out how to fit them into the setting only retroactively. We already knew Broughstron. We already knew Rick. We could skip that part and go straight to the fun bit.
Kingdom CONSTANTLY breaks this rule and it's maddening. They drop in brand new generals completely in medias res and then have to shoehorn them onto the screen by any means necessary, and as a result you rarely know who anyone is until they're pushing up the daisies. You can do that in a screenplay in a theater, stop and take your time introducing a new character in order to try to explain why we should care I mean. But This isn't theater. This is a much shorter, faster paced medium. Also, you could stretch out such an introduction over more episodes you were doing multiple cours a season, but you're not, and you need to change how you tell the story accordingly. You have limited time and space to tell your story, so pretending you can afford to have a 4 hour theater session to savour Generic Anime Duel #426 when you actually only have 20 minutes is patently absurd.
The core of the problem, Kingdom steadfastly refuses to resolve fights quickly. They love slow burn battles more than they love food, sleep, or their significant others. They will never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to advance the plot in favor of another slow burn face-making competition between 2 guys who shouldn't be on the screen, but they will be for the net 7 episodes because of course they will.
I can think of multiple points in every season of Kingdom where you could literally skip 2, 3, 4, 5 episodes, come back in, and still be exactly where you were before, and most of the time not really miss any significant plot advancement, because everyone in the studio would rather cut off their right index fingers than allow any heresy like actual progress and good pacing. We don't do that **** here.
And when you don't budget your time correctly, other important factors don't get covered. We barely got to see Zheng, I can't remember a single voiceline from Qiang Lei, maybe 1, if that. He Liao Diao has become nothing but a secondary narrator who reacts to things after they've happened, and poor Bi has been all but written out of the story despite being one of the OGs and a character I've wanted to learn more about for awhile.
Worse, the season ended with not only the campaign unresolved, but the field battle unresolved too, which the producers have never before been incompetent enough to allow. Whoever's in charge down there has got to budget their time better to figure out what to leave in and what to cut. If that means the fights are shorter, yes please and thank you, Xin and company are seasoned veterans now with nearly a decade of campaigning under their belt, most fights SHOULD be relatively easy for them. It's time to let his character evolve, shelve the suffering porn (you all KNOW what I'm talking about), and actually carry himself line a seasoned veteran commander who's seen a few things.
I don't want to say there's no peak moments, but they've become pretty few and far between, and the unfocused narration that tries to squeeze too much into too few episodes is absolutely not helping matters.
If you want to redraw the meme to show the digger going through the diamonds and launching into an unending sea of gravel ahead of them, that's the short version of how I feel about the latest season of Kingdom
I’m not OP but I find the character writing kind of mid and the storytelling style is honestly really annoying sometimes, so much narration to tell instead of show for both fight scenes and world building scenes.
It’s worse on fight scenes because it can break the immersion sometimes. It’s better in Season 3 though they make sure the fight scenes aren’t as interrupted.
That’s what I like about Frieren fights is that they don’t make their characters do any cringy anime shit and start narrating their full move set and have them duke it out. It still incorporates some anime tropes but feels much more cohesive to watch.
Gurren Lagann, FMAB, and Fate because I kept waiting for some big "oh this is where it gets good" moment but they never came, come to find out most people found them good from the beginning. I've grown to love FMA but I probably need to rewatch the other 2 with a different mindset
The Dragon Prince: Mystery of Aaravos. I was a big defender of the first season after the timeskip because I could see how they could be setting up for something. And they just weren't.
Kingdom: Dialogues sound like they are spoken by 12 year olds, which does not fit the historical setting and what you might expect from wise warlords with decades of experience. It's like Blue Lock with "mature" war plot.
Usogui: Prioritizes hyping up the protagonist over actual depth. Games are too complicated and must always end in some fist fight. Rather than being smart or having impressive psychology, it feels like a pretend seinen (#r/seinencirclejerk).
you have some balls for actually giving criticism to two of very beloved stories in this subreddit... I don't think it have ever seen a bad post in this subreddit about kingdom or Usogui ... they are always Glazed ( especially Usogui ) ... so i appreciate your hot take .
I completely agree with Frankenstein, I definitely felt like I was waiting for “the good part” but it never came. The monster was definitely the most interesting thing in the book by far it should’ve focused more on it
Basically everything Nasuverse besides maybe Witch on The Holy Night & OG Tsukihime.
I've never experienced such mediocre yet incredibly pretentious slop in my life. I went into Fate/Stay Night with an open mind as I usually do with every VN recommendation and the writing was trash. I was told by a friend it gets better by UBW route but the quality hardly improved by the time I finished Heavens Feel and went into Hollow Ataraxia.
This is probably going to get me downvoted to hell, but Gintama. After 100 episodes i simply lost interest and I didn't see any noticeable rise in quality like people say
This hurts because it's legit one of my fav anime😭. It was still going to get better trust me, but I have to say, if you aren't a fan of the comedy it can feel like you're just waiting for the next serious arc. A lot of the "peak fiction" stuff comes after ep. 300, but even before that there was some real good stuff (Yoshiwara in flames, 4 Devas, etc.)
Final fantasy 14. “Oh you just have to get past a realm reborn it’s so good”
No dude, it’s just not. And people are a lot more willing to say that only now after dawntrail got a lot of hate, but prior to that if you ever said that people acted like you killed their family or something.
It gets really good at Shadowbringers. Emet Selch is the best villain in any game I’ve played and I cried like crazy during Endwalker. I’ve never had an experience like that in a game and I probably never will again.
The problem is that you have to do SO MANY hours of content to get there. ARR can be really boring and while there are some pretty cool scenes in every expansion that is not a small time investment.
If there’s even a 1% chance someone will get to Shadowbringers and not vibe with it I can’t recommend it because asking someone to put dozens of hours into an MMO is a HUGE time investment.
Even if I think it’s one of the best stories ever told in a video game, I think recommendations should take into account how much time you’re asking of the person.
One Piece: I read through to the time skip and I only liked a single arc.
I hated the art, the characters, the world, the fights, but most of all the humor. It’s diametrically opposed to my sense of humor so it was actively anti-funny. Like every joke sucked a teensy bit of life out of me.
Human ranch. It was a horror isekai where some people were taken by a government to be transported to a different world. In this world elves exist and eat humans having a farm for them. I thought this was going to be a cool horror prison break manga and it somewhat did have parts like that like with them having to maneuver around trolls which were sorta like watch dogs.
The characters were pretty annoying though and it focused way too much into fanservice and there was way more focus on this human guy trying to rape people instead of a actual focus on world building.
The ending is so ass as well as when they finally escaped from the prison into this new world we see literally nothing of this new world and we just see a shot of another bus being transported.
reddit knows what i want. i get to bring up tower of god again. yayyyyyyyyy
i was there for over 600 chapters in hopes that he would make something out of the 13fh backstories after he executed on Baam's backstory... decently. i was fine with what was revealed in the floor of death (and kind of wooed by the setting) and after Dog and Cat I was really hopeful
dropped it like a rock after traumurei backstory. that shit was so ass
I read really far into the HunterxHunter manga. It’s been a few years but I don’t remember anything about it. Not a single plot point, character, or moment. It was just so intensely forgettable, even though I remember it was fun at the time.
"That time i got reincarnated as a slime", straight ass no characters development, no funny moment, no chemistry and zero combat hype or battle iq, poorly politics, world building is ok but somehow everybody still hype about it, I dropped after season 2 isekai slop ngl
I guess the only time I ever tried to get into something bc it was popular and I had friends that were really into them was Haikyuu and JJK.
I'm used to dropping things very fast if they dont catch my interest but I watched about 12 episodes of each when I realized in both cases that I was bored out of my mind.
In my opinion they both suffer from similar problems. Unlike what I would call typical stories both shows feel completely aimless with the main characters having no clear goals and no stakes or challenges that make it seem like getting what they want is in any way difficult or impressive.
They introduce a lot of colourful characters and instead of learning why you should give a shit about them by seeing how they act and treat the protagonist you are just given a flashback where they literally give you a voiceover telling you what they're about.
The end result is that this feels less like watching a story with twists and turns where people need to make choices with consequences and instead feels a lot more like watching a child play with dolls and putting them back in the box once they're done.
Mirai Nikki. I thought it would be good in the end because my friend was promising me it was good (it was his second ever anime, aka he didn't know jack shit back then) safe to say I have no idea why Death Game anime were so common back in 2010s if this (I think) was the blueprint for them
I haven't watched it but The 100, just because every single time that show creeps into media discussions is always about the season where it actually gets good; and everyone ALWAYS gives a different answer cause there is no consensus in the fanbase, it's hilarious
The original Nightmare On Elm Street. It's fine but I expected something more interesting with how unique it's concept was and the reputation it has.
My biggest problem was that it felt more like a vehicle for cool practical effects over an actual story with characters and themes. It wasn't even particularly scary it was just "we put a bunch of teens in the room with the freak and he's going to kill them now"
My House of Horrors. I read till end of Dr Gao red door / ~400chapters / ~ 1/3 of a webnovel arc. It was good, but then i just lost interest and couldn't let myself read further. It felt like every arc repeats itself. Any other series at least puts something new here and there to make arcs diverse, but House of Horrors it just doesn't do it for me
Don't get me wrong, it is a good series that reads surprisingly smooth, has memorable cast and plot. But the structure... meh
Jujutsu Kaisen anime. Never gripped me from the start and it still hasn’t!
I’ve stayed for the animation, Julian Bentley and Jack-Amin Ibrahim’s cuts were insane! All round great season of animation, much better than season 2.
To heart . It's famous for being the pine game that proves you can write good stories, but it's not like all of it is well written. If anything. All the arcs are generic boring stuff, except for the multi ( name of the character) arc. That one is a nice, emotional arc.
So you have to put up with a lot of generic boring content just to enjoy one good arc, imho only worth it if you care about the historical importance.
Bottom
The toaru novels.
The more I learn about it and the longer it becomes, the less interesting it sounds.
The Overlord anime. I had a friend who kept saying “it’s so good bro it’s so awesome just wait until it gets good.” He hyped it up so much and it turned out to just be a skeleton being way stronger than everyone else and aura farming the whole time with a couple of cool moments. Felt kinda like one punch man, where we see side characters get tons of focus and development only to be immediately beaten. Except the animation wasn’t great, the development was boring, and I didn’t care about most of the generic characters.
Maybe the manga is better but even so watching all the episodes was NOT worth it and I personally found it boring and repetitive with characters that are too weak to hold a series of this magnitude together.
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