6/3/2023 0 Comments Space runaway ideon rightstufI finished the second cour of Natsu no Arashi. The long-awaited release of 3.33 in the West really did open the floodgates of opinion, it seems. I really can't recommend it enough, even though it's definitely minor Shaft.Īlso, there was yet another retrospective/comparison of Rebuild of Evangelion with the original Neon Genesis Evangelion, this one focusing on compositional elements from both works and coming down surprisingly hard on the side of the Rebuild movies as the "superior" experience. Unlike so many Shaft shows, which are aggressively about something specific, Natsu no Arashi is basically a sandbox for Shinbo to do whatever he wants to do, so there's a heavy dose of Shouwa nostalgia that's sometimes positive and sometimes negative but usually something to do with hime cuts, strawberry everything, and recreating album covers from the eighties and nineties. The second half of the show has proven interesting along those lines because the characters have reached a basic sort of equilibrium, by the end of the first half, and are now just pleasantly interacting with each other in various contexts. Instead, I'm watching the second cour of Natsu no Arashi and enjoying it a lot! I know I didn't post in here much about the first cour, beyond to say that it was an interesting pastiche from every stage of Shinbo Akiyuki's career (with Arakawa Under the Bridge and Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru having the closest overlap), but once I finished it, I liked what it had to say about the relationship between the horrors of the past and the idylls of the present enough to write up a blog post about it. I'll get through it, eventually, but at this point I'd almost rather resume my efforts to push through Space Runaway Ideon, which has some actual historical merit to it. Between a protagonist who spends most of her time in her room, refusing to fight, while the rest of the cast waits patiently for her to get her shit together and a plot structure that seems to threaten the cast constantly with front-line combat at the end of one episode before pulling them back at the beginning of the next, it's just not a show that inspires enthusiastic or sustained viewing. As long as Saitama doesn't try (and he didn't), the show still works.Īs much as I love the idea of Simoun on paper, an anime that is explicitly about a society in which our understanding of gender is more fluid and in which religion can literally be weaponized for mass destruction (further explained by Ogiue Maniax here), I am finding it almost impossible to watch. I don't understand why Saitama throwing a few more punches makes this core tragedy any less true. Saitama can't have rivals or enemys like Borus, he can't make inspiring speeches in the face of all odds (like the bike rider guy, the best scene in the show) because there's no chance he can ever lose. The core identity of Saitama isn't that he only uses exactly one punch, but his infinite strength negates all purpose out of a shounen world where strength is the source of purpose. So in that sense, gorm, i dont think it breaks any rules. Both Borus and Saitama got NOTHING at all from the fight, and Borus says something like: "So much for the prophecy." Then, in the spirit of the show, it takes it all away. It wants you to want that narrative, of a mutual loneliness that might inspire some real satisfaction in both characters. The brilliant thing about it though, is that I DO think the scene intends for you to draw the tragic comparison between Saitama and Borus. Saitama wants to be nice, but he still doesn't really care. That's why Borus says it wasn't even a battle. He's not bending over backwards to make this enjoyable for Borus, nor does he feel compelled to put any real effort in. What actually happens is Saitama is just as bored as usual, but mildly surprised that Boros is as strong as he is. For Twig's interpretation to be believable for me, I would have liked to see him actively try and look like he's fighting. He IS sympathetic toward Boros, and tries to let him have a moment at the end, but he wasn't "holding back" anymore than he usually does. There are other times in the show where he hits people in nonlethal ways, lets people do their moves on him for a little bit, just to entertain them and himself, briefly. I also interpreted the Borus fight as a sort of pity-fight on Saitama's part, but I agree with gorm that Saitama making a conscious decision to hold back is a stretch.
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