Forum - View topicUshio & Tora (TV) (both seasons).
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Stark700
 Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Season 2, episode 10:
Good episode, we got Ushio fighting in his armor in full power with confidence. Even against Hakumen's avatars, I think he is doing well. Plenty of emotions this episode as well. I like how the fighting also expands beyond just Ushio and Tora vs Hakumen but also Guren's return as well. Pretty intense action. Hyou's quite an underrated character so seeing him fighting was quite a pleasant treat.
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Stark700
Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Season 2, episode 11:
Yes! About time. Ushio and Tora fighting side by side again against Hakumen. I also really like the relationship between Mayuko and Tora from this show, one of the sweetest ones I've seen. 2 more episodes left...I'm super excited to see the next episode's battle as it could be the most intense one yet. Also glad to see Kagari and Rashin fighting this episode too! |
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Stark700
Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Series' finale
Nice, they finally managed to defeat that Hakumen after all the buildup and pain it inflicted. Good finale, really enjoyed the overall execution of it. And despite some rushing, I think the show did justice at presenting the story from their point of view. The very ending had a funny tease though lol. Meanwhile, I think the show was good and going to miss it for sure. 39 episodes of this was quite a wild ride. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15457 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Season 2, Episode 13 (Episode 39, Series finale)
I think that it was a bit of a cool reveal that Tora had apparently let himself be imprisoned by the Beast Spear as to protect it from Hakumen, I guess it never made sense before why he was not actually killed by it. Hakumen was a cool villain, one made of pure evil, so pure that its actions were of jealousy and fear. In general I would say it was a solid ending, minus some of the usual stuff. I will keep firm that this series flawed. I watched it and enjoyed it, but there were many times I was just taken out of enjoyment. I still think a lot of this show's appeal comes from a sense of nostalgia, nostalgia of the landscape of the manga that was serialised from 1990 to 1996. That is all fine and dandy, but I think only highlights the entertainment has changed since then, not so much with full of guts yet somehow creative Ushios and antihero (anti-villain?) Toras. A number of the morals seem questionable, or they come across as super preachy. It felt like there was a lot of saying all you need is guts or something, while other actions are evil and ugly, and it was sort of guts without having a plan. Science was treated as ridiculously evil in the first season like it was messing with things it should not, although this second season improved as it removed this aspect with the science guys being good. In my opinion Ushio is a terrible hero. We get told a lot about how great he is, but most of the time he is just an idiot without a plan, someone who just walks into what is right and really seems to do little about thinking. Did Ushio really have a plan on taking on Hakumen when he got the sub? Really it seemed to be to get to his mother and get her to make him dinner, it was feeling and not thinking, and even within how he was framed it was the source of many of the problems. All the planning in the series was bad. Planning was what every villain did, it was the monsters of the week scheming, it was the rivals trying to take the spear, it was the groups testing him, it was the science team capturing him, it was double crosses, it was his allies turning themselves into stone, and it was Hakumen, the master schemer. Tora is also a bad character, at least in how he was created. Tora is a monster who is mentioned and shown an interest in eating people, it is made clear that he could and wants to go out and eat humans, but he is supposedly made a good guy because he never really seems to want to go out and act on these plans. Ushio does not kill Tora because he did not actually do anything yet, in turn Ushio is a good guy for acting on his feelings on the matter and we are lead to believe that this rubs off on Tora. But logically this is a terrible decision, Ushio himself should actually be responsible for deaths due to inaction of not stopping a self proclaimed evil monster who said he would actually do something. It would be like doing nothing when a man claimed he was an extremist and has expressed interest in doing a terrorism act. I am going to stop being negative for a moment and say that I do feel this sequel season was much better than the first. There were no stupid monsters of the week, and there was a lot of payoff for things that happened earlier. It was a bit of a cold reset in Ushio pretty much losing all of his allies at the beginning of the season, but it kind of raised stakes and in the end it did feel like all the allies had more than come back. Hakumen with its voice was pretty awesome, Tora seemed to fit his role, and Ushio did seem to face more in terms of personal struggle. I give a rating of Decent (6/10). It was a nice ending, but there was no real need to try and tease that Tora would come back after he had become so complete. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11340 |
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Whose death should Ushio be held responsible for? The priest who joined Hakumen's side? Also, what other "monsters of the week" were there besides maybe the whale? I think all the others came back to the story, so those were just introductions. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15457 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Hypothetical deaths that could have happened, although it is beyond that and maybe is "should". Tora said he ate people and made it clear that it was his plan, the only thing that stopped him was an ego of revenge to Ushio, while Ushio never considered to stop him before that happened. He even decided to go out eat people one episode, the only thing that stopped him were an array of anime/manga hijinks.
Episode 2: Rock Eater appears, causes trouble, and is killed. Episode 3: Painting monster appears and beaten same episode, new character introduced not relevant again until much later. Episode 4: floating head monsters, as above beaten same episode. Episode 5: exorcist introduced, this time a threat to Tora but still beaten same episode and not relevant again till much later. Episode 6: ocean monster, killed same episode, monster becomes relevant a few episode ago with a connection to Hakumen. Episode 8: plane monster, killed same episode, new character not relevant until a while later in the series. Episode 9: Kamaitachi, to give credit to this episode it does have the two other kamaitachi getting help from him and they do have a larger role, but again killed in the same episode. Episode 10: Zashiki Warashi, although this time it is not actually the problem and it is the humans that are, regardless problem is resolved in episode and he moves on from introduced characters. Episode 11: Mirror demon, killed same episode. After this point it actually starts to have a narrative not about introducing some monster just to be defeated, although episodes 14, 15, and 16 introduce the successors for the beast spear in a similar fashion. Is my complaints about "monsters of the week"? Yes much came back later in the story, and that is fine as a whole series go, but many of them happened episode after episode and only came back in the series later on, which was about episode 17, where the characters separate again after episode 18. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11340 |
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So you should hold someone responsible for hypothetical deaths that never actually happened?
 Glad you're not in charge.
And no, if they come back into the story later, regardless of how much later, they're not monsters of the week, so only 2 & 4 count, if I understood your summary. Unless there's some maximum number of episodes between first and second appearances that can't be exceeded for some reason. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15457 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Well Tora said that he ate people in the past, he said in no uncertain terms that he would do it again and attempted it several times in one episode. Is attempted murder bad? Would I be in the wrong if I set a wild hungry tiger into a schoolyard and it tried to eat some child? Ushio continued to be under the wrong impression that hitting Tora and the head and telling him not to would be enough. A show cannot just throw a bunch of what would make it a monster of the week format, throw in an episode that technically had returning characters from those episodes return and say it no longer counts. The complaint is that it is a cheap way of writing contained stories without interweaving larger story into those conflicts, I did actual voice some approval when it started to change the format with some differences and that it brought elements back, but still does not change that before episode 16 the majority of the episodes followed the complaint. |
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