Forum - View topicKuromukuro (TV).
|
Goto page Previous Next |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11348 |
|
|||||
|
I have to really give them props for not letting those kids get away with an instantly miraculous save. I think we got enough characterization for them that they probably didn't die, but that gives me hope that they've given some thought to how they survived, rather than just "Welp, we dived into this ditch and it's taken us a few days to let you know we're still alive."
Or they could be toast. And that would be ok too, because they've still dealt with the fallout of that. I'm not too happy with Yukina's pouting, but that's teenagers for ya, so I can't complain too much. I was also not too happy with the teacher dressing in that bathing suit. Really? Even if she were in a standard school suit, they could have gotten the same mileage out of Kenosuke's reaction. My main fear right now is that the guys in the spaceship will send this right off the rails. Fingers crossed... |
||||||
|
||||||
Darkmagick
 SubscriberPosts: 463 |
|
|||||
I read that less as "teenagers amirite" and more "taking out inherently evil demons is totally different than KILLING PEOPLE." I mean, everyone else on the mecha pilot team is a career soldier, but Yukina's only a normal high school student. At the start of this episode she found out that she had essentially just murdered someone - of course she had a hard time handling that. Then she's having a fundamental disconnect with Kennosuke where she's seeing these "demons" as human beings, and he's just "NO THEY'RE DEMONS." She can't even talk out how killing other humans makes her feel, because her partner refuses to see them as humans. This episode was one long chorus of "humanity is counting on you" and "you're a hero" and "wow you piloted a giant robot so cool" and all Yukina can think is "I JUST KILLED SOMEONE." When no one else seems concerned about that, she then starts thinking, "Maybe it's me. Clearly this is not something I can handle. I don't want to do this anymore." And then Kennosuke tells her that he just wants to kill all the demons - with no idea how many of them there are, that could be genocide - and then pretty much just suicide. And even though he's not really pressing her here, and she knows that, a part of her just hears "I want to use you to murder my enemies (which you should totally be okay with) and then I'll vanish on you like your dad did." And then her mother shows up, and even though the mother is trying to say, "it's okay, you don't have to do this," the pre-existing relationship between her and Yukina makes it end up sounding like, "Why aren't you okay with this, you should totally be okay with this." Which just confirms what Yukina's always been thinking that her mother doesn't hear anything she says or understand anything she feels. I don't think it's so surprising that the pressure became too much for her and she finally ran out at the end of the episode. ...Wow, that was more words than I intended to write. Well, I do think Yukina is this show's best character and greatest asset, and that her relationship with her mother is the show's most compelling relationship, so I guess I have strong feelings. To be honest, I only found Kennosuke interesting for the first time this episode. Before now, he seemed very firmly lodged in the "samurai out of time" archetype, with little characterization beyond that. Reasonably likable, but not particularly interesting. (I wonder what it's says about me that I start finding him interesting when he starts revealing a pathological "the enemy isn't human so it's okay to slaughter them" justification and suicidal tendencies...  )
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11348 |
|
|||||
That wasn't exactly what I was complaining about, or rather, that didn't seem to be the root of all her complaints, just the tipping point. She's been pouting since this started, even before Kenosuke popped out of his cube, and I didn't much mind, because teenagers, but this episode it just seemed like teenager squared. Her main complaints mostly seem to be self-centered (people make fun of me because of my dad, my dad disappeared (and could be dead, but not my concern, it's his own fault), I don't wanna save the world, as long as it's not me getting killed, nobody ever listens to all the stuff I never say, I don't want to be a hero that everyone pays attention to, why won't anyone pay attention to me?) rather than morality-based (it's wrong to kill them because they're people). Maybe the biggest source of my irritation with her is the nobody listens when I never say anything part, but that's also pretty typical.  And it bothered me that upon learning of the probable deaths of her classmates, she seemed not shocked or horrified, but utterly disinterested, except for the unwanted attention it brought to her.
On the other hand, I'm perfectly fine with her being scared out of her wits and not wanting to kill people and not wanting to pilot the Eva anymore. I just wish she'd stand her ground on that conviction and defend it out loud instead of literally running away. She has no reason to think her mother's love is dependent on her getting in the cockpit or not. Her mother's life maybe, not to mention her sister's and that of everyone she knows, but not her love. I know not all her behavior is teen-angst based, and I can see that she learned as a child to keep a low profile, but this is one of those crucibles where you have to grow up fast or cling to the old patterns and self-destruct, and she's chosen the latter course. Fortunately, I'm sure the writers have some growth awaiting her in the wings. I'd really despair if I thought she was going to be like this the whole series. |
||||||
|
||||||
One-Eye
 Posts: 2261 |
|
|||||
Blue Gender had a mech that required 2 pilots. One handled the general movement and the other handled its arms when fighting the giant bugs. I want to say I've seen it somewhere else as well, but can't remember. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Darkmagick
Subscriber Posts: 463 |
|
|||||
I guess I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't find her behavior to be particularly unreasonable, so it didn't bother me? I mean, before plot-related stuff started happening, any unhappiness she expressed seemed to be centered around her relationship with her mother and people insensitively bringing up her disappeared dad (who, from her point of view, essentially walked out on them to chase some wild delusion). Other than that, it was showed that she seemed to get along with her classmates and that she wasn't really dumb - she just didn't really have the motivation to apply herself in school. She had other interests outside of her worries (dam trivia, apparently). Sure, most of her worries were self-centered, but that's normal for a teenager in high school. I thought she was quite well developed by the end of the first episode. As for after the plot started...Well, I think she was handling the situation a hell of a lot better than I would have. I personally find the idea of being a soldier to be one of the least attractive professions I can possibly imagine (no disrespect meant to people who do that for a living, it's just not for me), and if I were told "your career path for the foreseeable future is fighting and you have no choice and no other options," my first reaction would be "screw that" and I'm not even a teenager. While Yukina was clearly not happy about the situation, she did seem to acknowledge "this is something that needs to be done and there's no replacement," and was willing to go along with it as long as there was no better solution. She griped to her friend some, but isn't that what friends are for? 
Certainly when the enemy mecha showed up at the end of episode 5, she headed to the battlefield with minimal hesitation, and when someone asked her if she was all right, she just said she'd do what she could. She could have complained there, could have said "I'm scared out of my skull stop this crazy thing," but she went for the path of not worrying them, because she knew the only other option than her going was her ditching them and leaving everyone to die. So she seemed to be dealing with the situation by thinking "I'm scared and not entirely happy here, and I feel my feelings are being ignored, but I'll help out beating the bad guys because no one else can and bad guys need to be beat." And I agree that the revelation at the end of episode 6 was a tipping point, not the first moment she started to have a problem with the situation. That was when things suddenly changed to "I'm scared and not entirely happy here, and I feel my feelings are being ignored, but I'll help murder people because that's what everyone wants apparently - hey, wait a second." And so it turned into "everyone thought I should be totally okay with having my entire future stolen away, and I didn't really fight them on it, and now we've had this big disturbing revelation, but everyone still thinks I should be totally okay with this, and why do I have to be totally okay with this?"
I don't think she really thought that her mother didn't (or wouldn't) love her, just that her mother didn't really function as a mother. Which I honestly think is fair - I think her mother's portrayal thus far has been someone who loves her kids and wants to do right by them, but just isn't very good at doing the mom thing. For the basic cliche part of that, it's clear that she's essentially never home. The uncle is the responsible adult, Yukina does all the housework. (It's clear from this episode that even Koharu feels this - she was upset that her mother had come all the way home and hadn't even stayed long enough to eat dinner with them. And that probably happens all the time.) And the first episode is littered with examples of how disconnected her relationship with Yukina is. The show opens with Yukina putting a totally absurd desired profession that makes no sense on her career survey ("Mars"), in the hope that her mother would at least do the typically mom thing of telling her to think about her future seriously. Instead, her mother takes no notice and assumes Yukina is being completely serious - because she doesn't actually spend enough time with Yukina to know her better. Not only that, she gets mad at the teacher when he tells Yukina to think about her future seriously. When Yukina meets up with her mother at the research center to return her phone, she asks Yukina why Yukina didn't just return the phone at school. Yukina had, of course, been shouting at her mother that she had left the phone, which her mother hadn't heard because she had been too busy talking over Yukina with support for her ridiculous "Mars" career. In other words, her mother seems to try very hard to do the things that she knows loving moms are supposed to do, such as "support your children's dreams," but in doing so doesn't actually pay any attention to the children themselves. Not because she doesn't care - she's just busy, very easily distracted, and kind of awkward with communication. There's no reason to assume that things between her and Yukina don't always go the way they went in the first episode - if they didn't, Yukina wouldn't be doing things like writing "Mars" on her career survey. And so, when her mother asks her "Why didn't you say anything?", her reaction is, "I have been begging you to listen to me for eighteen years. And clearly you didn't hear me even once." ...So yeah. I actually like Yukina a lot. I feel like she's one of the best realized "everygirl" characters I've seen in a good while. (Even if she's not 100% everygirl since her parents are so involved with things.) I think a lot of effort has been put into making her a three-dimensional character. Oh, and to be clear, I don't dislike the mother. I think she's a very good character (even if I can't seem to remember her name  ), and she's clearly trying. She's just not very good at this, and Yukina ran out of benefit of the doubt to give her long before the series started.
|
||||||
|
||||||
DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
|
|||||
|
I think that I am on the Yukina side too. Not that she is totally right with the decision to absolutely refuse to pilot and letting the aliens have their way, but I see where she is coming from. From the beginning of the episode we got a look at her past where she has had to deal with stigma of what her father believed, clearly something quite stressful when she was that age. She pushed some of that frustration on the cause, her father, and the next thing she knows he went missing, and really she probably blames herself and think it is because she said that to him.
Yukina was partially responsible for the death of the human enemy, which might sound small with all the stuff we see in anime, but for me personally I know that would really affect me if such a thing actually happen. Everyone saw her part of it and has huge expectations of her, and no one actually seems to want to talk to her about that. Plus the first thing that happens at school is what seems to be the reveal that it also likely killed her two classmates, no doubt the thought is scaring her out of her mind so she is actually numbing herself, it is not disinterest but she is trying to make herself not care because it would be easier. Yukina does understand the situation, she knows that she is needed to co-pilot, but is so much responsibility on her that she is not ready. So she is probably actually hating herself, not the least because she instinctively keeps also saying terrible things like blaming the death of Kennosuke's princess on him and insulting her missing father and getting slapped for it. A whirlwind of emotions, that is a teenager for you, and I think that is something we tend to forget a bit about the magnitude. She is not Shinji yet, she is scared of the weight of human life, people around are trying to also be understanding in their own way, but as in life two people can just miss that docking of conversations. I continue to think this show is being surprisingly strong. Kind of feels like one of the shows that should be reviewed. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Darkmagick
Subscriber Posts: 463 |
|
|||||
I agree, there's a lot to talk about here. Well, if the pattern of previous Netflix licenses holds, it'll probably get reviewed after Netflix posts up the whole thing with English subs. It's still a shame we can't have week-to-week reviews on this, of course. *shakes fist at Netflix* |
||||||
|
||||||
|
FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
|
|||||
|
Yukina never clearly states WHAT is on her mind, we get glimpses of her memories in flashbacks about other school children taunting her, we of course see other class mates in the present calling her a "hero" which is from her point of view a different version of what happened in her youth (that is, people identifying her as something she feels she is not), and then Ken and Sophie believe she is upset because Yukina almost got blown up by the self destructing enemy.
As it goes the problem is running both ways, Yukina by the end of the episode finds NO ONE to confess what is on her mind, this is somewhat different for Ken who confesses his desire to continue to fight and would still need Yukina to Unami the acting school counselor. Yukina likely was seeking out her father to confess what was on her mind, but seeing as he has been missing for almost a decade it simply turned into frustration so when Hiromi tried to play the non-workaholic mother they naturally erupt into an argument. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11348 |
|
|||||
All I said to begin with was "I'm not too happy with Yukina's pouting, but that's teenagers for ya, so I can't complain too much." Now it's sounding like y'all agree that her being a teenager is a big factor in her behavior, so I guess we're mostly on the same page now? oO And to be clear, it's the pouting in particular that I didn't like. She's got plenty on her plate to be upset about, so pouty-face and the silent treatment are not working for me. It's acceptable when her little sister does it, but doesn't look so good on her at her age. But again, kids (and too many adults who never grew out of it) do that. I'd also like to say that just because I'm not happy with a character's behavior doesn't necessarily mean I think the authors should have written different behavior for that character, or that I think it's unrealistic. Many people who hate Shinji often feel that he's poorly written because they would never act like that, but the reason they don't like him is because he's very honestly written.
|
||||||
|
||||||
Cyberd1
 Posts: 106 |
|
|||||
|
Yukina is a teenager and obsesses that someone died, which she feels that she is responsible for. But does not see that the one responsible is only the man himself, he was the one who chose suicide and murdered himself. He ignored all of his other options and committed suicide, it could also be argued the he alone is responsible for any collateral damage due to that choice. Now being a teenager Yukina with keep "I killed someone looping through her head.
But do to Ken being so obsessed whit revenge he is oblivious that he is now apart of a family that cares about him and would be greatly effected by his death. So good on Yukina for telling him she will not participate in something that will eventually cause his death, which completely fly's over Ken's teenager male head because he is still just thinking about revenge. So teenagers what can you do about then? |
||||||
|
||||||
|
FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
|
|||||
|
I got a decent smile off the episode endless beating the horse of "I thought you bastards were dead!" joke, Yuusuke and Jundai are effectively yucking it up and certainly could have been killed in the collateral explosion (hell most of the classmates DID think the two were done for) but the seller was the nature that they were apparently sweaty and dirty and STILL go back to school for the day.
As for the Yukina plot, she recklessly goes off on her own looking based on the latter entries of her Father's journal, whoever is her rescuer from the mechanical drones certainly can handle a blade. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
DuskyPredator
Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
|
|||||
|
I like how the sister calls to warn the mother that Yukina is missing, but also adds that she is hungry.
The father punching his son is harsh, but imagining what he was probably feeling in thinking that his son was dead muddies it a bit. Characters could make more logical decisions, like the uncle should have made a few calls about hearing what Yukina was doing (which at least means that she told him), but they are largely logical to the characters I think. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
|
|||||
The audience can only take from implication that this isn't the first time he has done something overly rash, Yuusuke is the rebellious youth stereotype at this point and probably will get a little more time but I would still bet against him getting close with Yukina even if Ken wasn't a clear competitor. |
||||||
|
||||||
Stark700
 Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
|
|||||
|
I'm starting to dislike Yukina more and more this season, nothing so far that I find likable about her up to this point including the latest episode. And she made everyone worry about her too including Ouma and her own mother.
I'm also curious bout who saved her at the end. Somehow, I have a feeling that it isn't her dad. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Darkmagick
Subscriber Posts: 463 |
|
|||||
I wonder if part of it isn't that he's just not very good at communicating what he's actually thinking. He's introduced as the "likes the heroine but can't spit it out" guy, and maybe he tends to be like that with a lot of things? (I mean, he's a teenager.) And when his dad asks him the very reasonable question of "What on earth was so important that you had to put yourself in the middle of something so dangerous?" he just can't bring himself to admit "I was worried about the cute girl in the cockpit." Which is, you know, still a dumb reason to sneak onto a battlefield, but it's a lot more understandable than the "no reason really" he gave. So yeah, I agree about the punching bit. I definitely raised an eyebrow and said "wait a second dad" at that part, but hearing that must have been terrifying for him. (Maybe bad communication runs in the family? He couldn't just say, "You scared the shit out of me, please don't ever do that again.")
One of the things that I really like about this series is that it's consistently actually quite funny, even in the middle of otherwise serious bits. Even last episode, which was mostly "Yukina is at her limit and can't take this anymore" still had great bits like her and Kennosuke dueling with popsicle sticks. 
Other bits I liked this episode were the previously mentioned "Oh no, the heroine is missing! Also, she didn't cook breakfast, I'm hungry." and Kennosuke demonstrating that his disconnect with the modern world doesn't mean that he can't enjoy the finer things in life like trashtalking someone who disagrees with you on the internet. ...Actually, that's part of what I liked about the director's previous work, Sekai Seifuku (though that show was inherently absurdist to begin with). I should probably get around to watching his more famed works, Darker than Black and Wolf's Rain, at some point. |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group