Max Freeman

@maxfreeman.bsky.social

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huh?

Excerpt from a celebratory insert for the Manga Series "Heisei Defeated Soldier Sumire", in which different mangaka from adjacent magazines relate their own "Heisei era defeats" using the character Sumire as a stand-in. In this 3-Panel-Comic the author Yani Neko; Nyan Nyan Factory; relates a story about how they missed their coming-of-age ceremony due to a lack of cigarettes.

dragon ball sagas tournament of power real picture

Not breaking any new ground by saying Verdelet is annyoing really, but his constant chattering and praying being accentuated by the occasional wavering in faith as he realizes they're all fucked is really good. In general the game never pulls it's punches in depicting a world truly unsalvagable, hitting you with the "Four endings remain" after the relatively bitter sweet ending A feels almost like a taunt; "You've yet to see what the story truly has to offer, go ahead and find out"; leading into ever increasing worse scenarios for Caim and the world he inhabits. The writing can be a little clumsy, everyone feels just a little bit too one note like arioche and leonard being the most specific examples, but its not really super intrusive. Also the music ended up really growing on me, the wailing, repeating, scratching and crashing instruments support the action quite well though the Desert Battle song has a sequence that sounds like the Spongebob Squarepants theme and that distracted me a lot.

Image of the Kamen Rider characters V3 and Skyrider (known as Kamen Rider during the early run of his series) "dapping it up"

The show so far displays quite a bit of the same bad habits that other cg centric shows do, but its nowhere near as bad as it was in Regenesis and Berserk 2016 was always more of a worst case scenario. They still occasionally try to do animation tricks that don't look good with models and running still looks stilted and weird. Of course you also still get the scenes that are animated regular, with the same tired comments of "why isn't the whole show like this" when there very likely is a good reason that has nothing to do with laziness of the animators; on the contrary where it shines the most is within the very clear love this adaption shows to the source material; its clear they are doing the best they can with what they are given and it shines through in especially the fight sequences, which enter a white void with harsher lighting to focus entirely on the choreography itself. It looks very good and i'd be lying if i said it didn't make me "pog out my gourd" when they happened. Of course being a streaming show its also uncensored, and they didnt skimp at all with even the cg models displaying violent gore with exposed bulging brains and the like. At first blush i was eyerolling at another cg animated adaption, this time for a series that has a rough history with them in general, in an industry chockful to the brim with adaptions of existing material during an ongoing craze of re-adapting and newly adapting even older material from 40 odd years ago; but watching it convinced me at the very least that, for now, this is something i'll keep an eye on. It might drop in quality, it might lose the spark i found in it but i'll keep rooting for this team regardless.

Denji looks off at Asa, playing ball with her classmates. He expressed desire to go to school throughout the final chapter, and in this penultimate page whistfully stares at Asa living his ideal life. In the end, Denji was freed from the cycle of becoming Chainsaw Man, he got to meet Power and Nayuta again, and is living a generally much more quiet life, the kind of life he and Pochita had dreamed of creating for themselves. Is he happy, in the end? Will he end up going to school? Will the world still end? The ending, deliberately, leaves all these questions unanswered, we dont have to know and probably never will. Out of all the possible endings, this one is the most positive one that could be achieved without wholesale breaking every theme the series ever built upon, yet its clear it's not the most satisfying ending for really anyone. A lot of the final act of Part 2 was seemingly building towards a Devilman esque bitter ending, in which Denji dies fighting an inevitable battle against War/Asa, who is then left alone with his body in a destroyed, potentially undying world. Neither of these endings would satisfy the more rabid "hopeful happy end" person, who would like for Denji to become a get-the-girl type figure no matter what, because he "deserves" to be. There's much to muse about the ending we did get, and i did like it overall. Will i if ever re-read the series in a few years? I can't say, i'll be a different person then. But maybe a little Chainsaw Man is in all of us.

$Key Art for the Anime adaption of the Light Novel series Fate\Zero, featuring the 7 servants (Left-to-right:Archer, Berserker, Saber, Assassin, Rider, Caster) posed up infront of their Masters in Shilouette$

$Key art for the Remastered version of Fate\Stay Night, featuring Matou Sakura, Tohsaka Rin and Saber, with Emiya Shirou in the back.$

$Musician Billie Eilish reacting in an excited manner (colloquially known as a "Pog" face). Behind her is a frame from the Unlimited Blade Works Route of Fate\Stay Night which depicts Archers end in his original, mortal life. Overlaid in red is the text "Yet, these hands will never hold anything.", part of Archers incantation and thematically important to his character.$