Forum - View topicThe Spring 2022 Preview Guide
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Kitsu Kyouno
 Posts: 170 |
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Really they thinks that Menou is an evil girl when really she does her job because in this world they had to retaliate for the isekai boys, but at the same time they defend Rudeus, Ainz and Naofumi??? :I
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Aerodynamic41
Posts: 226 |
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The LN actually provides more context to this (spoilers just in case): spoiler[Summoning otherworlders requires channeling power through the astral veins, which the church constantly monitored. Hence, any disturbance in the astral veins will be immediately noticeable. Basically, the Noblesse knew that the moment they summoned an otherworlder, the Faust will immediately come after them. The Noblesse only want the girl. The boy was meant to be a decoy to keep the Faust off their tail. The originally thought that the Faust would just assassinate the boy and be done with it but unfortunately they didn't expect that the boy would reveal the girl's existence to Menou, which made their whole plan fall apart.] |
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1010 |
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Bold assumption that I like any of these characters t b h |
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Nate148
Posts: 476 |
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The issue with Lanzhu in the LL world was that spoiler[she for a time split up the MCs making a lot of drama for a time]
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wolf10
 Posts: 907 |
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Y'know, I've been thinking really long and hard on it, and I think I'll devote my limited watching time this season to things that aren't obviously precision-engineered to upset me. Fortunately, there's lots of cozy stuff airing this season, so I feel spoiled for choice.
So, today's premieres: Love All Play. From the first episode, I can tell this was constructed for a binge viewing model. Probably not a bad call for shelf-life reasons, but it means that basically nothing happens in the first episode. Apparently it's better to reject any acknowledgement of your personal potential because your parents have been hard at work grinding your self-confidence into paste for years? Probably the wrong takeaway, but it doesn't seem to have actually changed the plot trajectory at all. Still, they've got me hooked until the next episode, at least. Shadowverse Flame. This hole was made for me. I missed the prior season entirely, but have a truly heinous amount of playtime in the tie-in game, Champion's Battle. This time around, we get a trio of good boys in a Dragoncraft, Shadowcraft, Forestcraft trinity. Light is amazingly deadpan at everything, even the obvious chuuni nonsense about his "destiny." This is peak battle shounen, right here. Subaru is hard to get a read on, but there's already an inherent gap-moe in having the genki insta-friend be a Shadowcraft main. I can already tell Itsuki will be this season's dark horse, especially if he's allowed to properly play up the overwhelming brutality of Forestcraft. Ah, good times. And the production quality is all-around fantastic, probably up there with the latest PreCure premiere. Great character designs and a lot of dynamic motion, even in an episode where ostensibly nothing happens. |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3459 Location: Finland |
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You have a history of bashing male leads, especially in isekai, in your own post history. Constantly. Aside from not quite understanding what the comparison here would be(?), something about a pot and a kettle comes to mind... |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2868 |
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add mobuseka to the ackward dating list, i really hope they take their time with this adaptation because that's the first that will be gone if they rush it. about yaboy kongmking. i have not watched it, but we were talking. about josei show 8n that other thread and I hope this one scratch that josei itch so i will watch it. about the executioner, having read what is out in the manga it's basically railgun in a fantasy setting even menou is about the same Character as Kuroko. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18227 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I think you mean Momo is the same kind of character as Kuroko. And yes, I'd agree that Menou/Momo is an apt comparison to Mikoto/Kuroko. (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the former is at least in part based on the latter.) The series are otherwise utterly different. I also find it interesting that Executioner has ended up having what's going to be one of the highest average critical scores of the season (4.4) - even higher than the current community rating. (And for the record, I gave it a 4.5 myself.) Didn't see that one coming. |
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primalmaximus
Posts: 106 |
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For those who are saying that "The Executioner and Her Way of Life" was written by someone who hates isekai and that the story is just about someone who goes around killing isekai'd people, you're completely wrong.
spoiler[It's explained in the novels that the "Lost Ones" have what's known as a "Pure Concept" attached to their soul when they come to this world. They have the embodiment of an abstact concept, such as Null or Evil, or a fundamental force, such as Time, bonded to their soul. This "Pure Concept" is powerful enough that it eventually overwrites the Lost One's personality. Because it is a power from without that is attached to their sould from within, they have no barriers protecting themselves from the force of the Pure Concept. Also, the series so far is about Menou trying to find a way to kill Akari, a lost one with the Pure Concept of "Time." Akari's power reverses time whenever she takes fatal damage. It also allows her to teleport, freeze and reverse time, and reset the entire timeline. And for the record, Akari wants Menou to kill her because Akari has reset the world enough times to know that if Menou does kill her, then she'll die. And Akari doesn't want Menou to die.] So, please give "The Executioner and Her Way of Life" a chance. It's very much a slow-burn with lots of intrigue. |
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Aerodynamic41
Posts: 226 |
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Yeah, in fact spoiler[the only isekai'd person she ever kills on-screen (at least as far as I've read which is Vol. 3) is Mitsuki at the beginning. After that it's all about her finding a way to kill Akari]. |
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Kitsu Kyouno
Posts: 170 |
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I just don't like to see them I never understood why they are the protagonists of each anime/manga/novel there's nothing special about them other than just being nice The comparison is for people seem to have no problems with anime when the male protagonist does something immoral. But now when a girl does its the end of the world 
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thadec
Posts: 45 |
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Are you certain? I am not familiar with this work but based on the review and the other comments I gather: Menou kills both males and females. Menou is killing innocents, not retaliating. Menou regards herself as evil for killing innocents. Now I am familiar with Jobless Reincarnation, Rise of the Shield Hero and Overlord. Rudeus and Naofumi cannot be compared to Menou because - whatever their other faults - they do not murder innocents. Ainz does, but in the role of a villain protagonist like Tony Soprano, Light Yagami and Michael Corleone. Meanwhile Menou isn't even an antihero like The Punisher or Talentless Nana but a sympathetic hero protagonist. As some heroes don't even kill murderous supervillains - Superman, Batman, Daredevil, Spiderman etc. - for a character that knowingly kills innocent people to still be depicted as a hero is going bother some people no matter how guilty the hero feels over it or how justified the worldbuilding depicts it. Superman's killing a genocidal Zod in Man of Steel caused a fandom meltdown from which the Snyderverse never recovered, but I suppose those years of controversy escaped your notice somehow. If you can come up with an example of a male character who purposefully kills innocent people and is still embraced as unambiguously heroic by both the entire fanbase and the character himself I would love to see it. |
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thadec
Posts: 45 |
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Let us go back to the original comment that started this track.
A yuri work that brutally murders the only named or otherwise significant in any way male character halfway through the first episode so that it can proceed with nothing but beautiful girls going forward is going to raise certain suspicions. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1401 |
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But she's not? Just going by this first episode, Menou isn't portrayed as a noble hero, doing what is right and just in the world. She's portrayed as ultimately a tool in a larger conflict between the Nobles and Church that - at best - keeps body counts to a minimum but is ultimately unable to stop the petty power struggle that continues sucking said innocents into a position where they become unwitting threats to the world around them. The most positive interpretation you can get from the first episode is Menou is doing something she deeply objects to because she's convinced it's the best option for reducing harm, and even then is emotionally conflicted over it and wishes she was able to stop the conflict that keeps the body mill churning. I'd argue she's about as close to an antihero as you can get, specifically because there's enough shades of grey that you can understand why she would continue being an executioner even though she doesn't want to kill innocents. At the risk of reviving a years-old argument, the reason somebody would bring up Naofumi is that his narrative goes out of its way to not just explain why he's willing to buy slaves, but to contrive moral justifications for why doing so is actually the morally correct thing. Yes, the character himself buys a slave out of desperation, but subsequent story beats and worldbuilding details do everything they can to retroactively make that desperation an act of benevolence. That's kind of what stops his story from being an antihero narrative and steering straight into Apologia - it's not about him doing bad things he feels are necessary. It's about him doing bad things that actually turn out to be good things, thus there's not really any ambiguity to speak of, just post-hoc justification for why Naofumi was morally correct the whole time. |
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Nev999
Posts: 134 |
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The way everyone is freaking out over it definitely makes me want to watch it more, so congrats, I'll be starting on it earlier than planned. It's like you guys have never seen a deconstruction or dark twist on a genre before? Imagine if everyone clutched their pearls this hard every time a superhero deconstruction come out. Y'all would lose your minds over Isekai Watchmen (well, provided Rorschach was a girl I guess, since that seems to be the huge point of contention). Magical girl fans have been putting up with this kind of thing for a while also, like, welcome to the club.
A genre where the premise is 'A (typically very young and likely to be reckless, and if they're NOT young they're very disaffected) outsider comes into another world, outsider gets incredible powers just because and uses them and gains adoration and status, outsider makes the other world conform somewhat to their own culture' is RIPE for a "look at the other side of this coin, look at how those people might exploit these kids to do evil or how they might do evil intentionally or unintentionally, look how the people of these worlds might be hurt by this and feel like they have to take drastic action". There's a ton of interesting questions you can explore with that if you look at it critically or from a less rosy perspective. It sounds like this work is actually a LOT kinder to isekai protags than most deconstructions/examinations I've seen of say, a superhero fantasy. Honestly, it would be fine even if it WAS harsh. It happens with every genre, especially if said genre is overrsaturated and often formulaic. Nothing's sacred, and it doesn't mean the author is "jealous" or "spiteful" for asking questions, overturning tropes or taking things down a darker path. I mean, if a work exploring these things DIDN'T come along, it would be astonishing to me, and kind of sad from a creative standpoint, that no one felt like they could do something different or have a conversation with these tropes. Yet because it's a girl daring to be the sad murdery protagonist for once, it's controversial now?
Are you living in an alternate universe? People love male characters who kill innocent people. Look at the huge fandoms any given antihero, villain or villain protagonist has. People love Rorschach. People love the Joker. People will argue so many characters did nothing wrong. People make excuses for isekai boy slave owners, and unlike those, it sounds like the story at least has this character admit what she's doing is wrong and it doesn't try to wriggle out of that. People are allowed to love morally ambiguous characters, honestly. The fact y'all are freaking out so hard over a character who's meant to be an antihero doing things that not good is incredible to me. And on the yuri thing, look, I'm a lesbian. I've written stories where male characters have been marginal because I prefer to focus on girls and their relationships, and I honestly don't have motives for it other than I think girls are cool and I want stories about queer women, we don't get to see them in certain roles a lot. Guys have written good yuri with largely female casts (I love Otherside Picnic), so I'm not going to automatically condemn a dude for doing the same thing I do. It's about if the story reads well, plays out well and those characters are constructed well. If he only cares about pleasuring himself, if he constructs the girls as sex objects at the expense of character and believablity, that will come through. But if it gives me some good female characters and interactions and it all gels with a good story, I'm not going to complain and I don't care if one isekai on this planet doesn't have a guy in the main cast. You guys don't come across as honestly caring about this issue, tbh, but I just want it to be known we can assess things fine for ourselves. |
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