Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Kingdoms of Ruin
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DRosencraft
Posts: 666 |
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I had a mini rant in the comments over on Crunchy a few episodes back. What I said then was that I 100% understood anyone who felt critical of the show and wanted to drop it, because even by the generally simplistic standards of most anime, this show had written itself into a vapid hole where not much of interest could happen. It was likely to keep down a path of just endless gory fights with the thinnest of veneers of reasoning, some vexatious allusion to a plot in the background, resulting in a story with no one worth caring about or having hope for.
Even someone like Doroka, who I would normally be right there with as one willing to put some faith in as realizing the futility of just adding more violence to the cycle or being one still clinging to hope when everyone else has abandoned it. But she has been given zero real agency, does nothing with her power. I don't even know that the show fully understands why it decided to have Adonis bring her back, as that seemed to serve no actual purpose in the moment, or in his plans, and only works as the laziest attempt to setup a face-turn for Adonis later on due to her convincing him to give up his vengeance kick. Except that might be the most vexatious ending the story can opt for as the guy literally just helped humanity commit a genocide so he could advance his own quest to commit humanity to extinction. This latest episode only further fuels the feeling that is what they want to do, as you now have Adonis making the most hypocritical and vapid excuse possible to finally not kill someone, and so whether you believe his stated reasoning, or it's the trope of him falling for the female lead, it's a dumb setup for a potentially very dumb payoff. Ultimately, and I could be totally wrong here, what people want from revenge stories isn't the hero just rampaging and killing anyone they see for no good reason. They want the character to get vindication for whatever wrongs they've suffered. Watching them slaughter innocents, torture random drones, is not satisfying or cathartic. We want to get to the end of the story and be able to say, "well, at least the real villain got what was coming, at least some good came of all this." Neither seems plausible to accomplish in any satisfying way for this story, and even at this point Adonis' eventual death seems to hold little meaning outside of being one last checkbox needed to close out the narrative. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5876 Location: Virginia, United States |
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He has a very good reason, genocide. The Man in the High Castle postulated a world where NAZI Germany and Imperial Japan won World War II. Years after the war ended with the former United States occupied by both Japan and Germany, the NAZI's had concentration camps operating on the North American continent and Japan conducted mass executions also. What do you tell the losers of that war, that they have to lay down and die. That they have to accept concentration camps, that they can only attack military targets. In Adonis's world, the people are not innocent. They cheered and they supported their government in the slaughter of the witches. They watched and cheered. Sure they are some that secretly hated it, and are powerless to do anything. But that doesn't matter in the scheme of things. You can not view this show through the lens of a modern citizen of the United States. Because you don't live in a post war United States, where we are the losers and are an occupied nation, with the occupying nations slowly killing off everyone who is not assimilating into the new regime, and everyone who is on their list of genocide. I think some of you are just seeing him kill everyone, destroying things and people enmasse and forgot the context of what led him there. The question you should be asking yourselves is what would you do, if the United States was a conquered nation. Everyone you know and loved is dead, everyone else is on the slow march to the concentration camps to be killed, eventually. There is no more U.S. military. There is no major resistance forces to join. Your only choices are to assimilate or die. Of course, assimilation is not a choice that Adonis has. The winner takes it all, as the song goes. |
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 514 Location: Poland |
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Except that comparison doesn't work, because the closest thing to losers, the witches, were genocided by humans with the help of MC, which also removed last hope for getting Chloe back. If MC wants to get revenge on evil humans, he should support witches - the losers in this genocidal war - against humans, but he does the opposite and ensures human can complete the evil they started. If MC cares mostly about what Chloe would want, then not only she wouldn't want genocide of humans, but more importantly she wouldn't want the genocide of witches to happen, besides if he cares mostly about Chloe he should try to resurrect her and then help her get what she wanted. You try to make MC as some fighter against evil empire, but he actually doesn't have any plan to his killing, since he's both against humans and against their victims, that what makes his rampage meaningless. He doesn't try to make world better, he just kills people or not however he pleases, sometimes excusing himself with "what would Chloe want", sometimes not, with no deeper logic to it. The biggest problem of this series is that it first tries to convince viewers that humans are evil and must be resisted by any means, then turns MC against their victims trying to fight against humans by any means. That is absolutely nonsensical. And there is Doroka the morality pet, who is just "why can't we all be friends" all the time, even to people who just finished genociding her kind. She also doesn't make sense, she's just "sing Kumbaya" opposite of MC's "genocide them" mentality with no deeper logic or sense. |
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DRosencraft
Posts: 666 |
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That right there is your first problem - there's no such thing as a good reason for genocide. Not sure there's any need to expound on that point. Just no. Whoever can make whatever crass justification they want. Genocide has no excuse. Beyond that I would say your overall point has more to do with a broad-based justification for terrorism, not so much genocide, and certainly not for what MC is doing. Terrorism is a tactic, using innocents as expendables in a bid to force the opposing force to act in a desire way because it cannot tolerate the losses born from the acts of terrorism. Can't win a ground war? force the enemy out because civilians just want the fighting to end so they aren't being killed anymore. At its base, terrorism has a goal of specific changes of society and/or government outside of the killing. Genocide, and what Adonis is attempting, are divorced from any greater objectives outside just killing. He's an angry team given the keys to a nuclear arsenal. You can say his goal is to get rid of all evil people, but that is only in so far as he has indifferently labeled all people as evil and thus needing to be killed. I'd say he's as bad as Thanos in the MCU, but even Thanos's actions technically had some greater purpose to them, as ultimately circuitous his logic was. Adonis is helping no one, advancing no cause, defending no one. Can't even really claim to be honoring anyone's memory because it should be glaringly obvious that Chole had no desire to go on a murder spree, and when he's done there's going to be no one left to remember anything, let alone think on or regret Chole or his situation. The story could have opted to give him some depth, but they chose not to. They couldn't be bothered. So for all else they could have done to make him into a reasonable MC, they instead left him to be a dumb teen who had something shitty happen to him, and reacted like a dumb teen too hopped up on his own emotions and ego to see two inches in front of him, with no hope for redemption. |
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 514 Location: Poland |
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This is the biggest trouble with the story, or rather with the MC. If he sided with the witches, we could indeed have morality arguments about "What are the losers in a genocidal war supposed to do" just like with that Slime episode where MC sacrificed enemy army to resurrect his subjects, but we don't have that. It's just MC and his personal anger at everyone who harmed Chloe, and everyone who let that happen, and turns into just revenge on the world for not being good enough for Chloe to live peacefully in it. I've read "The Dark Massacre of the Vengeful Hero", which is just as edgy as the title promises, with all good people being already tortured to death and evil people being punished cruelly, including villagers and sometimes even kids, and yet its MC has way more sense and direction in his revenge, and later even potentially something noble to fight for, compared to this series. |
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jr240483
 Posts: 4388 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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this series is basically an extreme version combination of, berserk, AoT & redo of healer! though its pretty clear that the author took pointers from redo of healer. for kingdom of ruin is basically RoH minus the R18 sex scenes! at least in the first two examples, both guts and eren AT LEAST still had SOME bits of humanity left! whereas in redo and this series, both keyaru and adonis have completely abandoned their humanity to become monsters of the worst kind in order to exact revenge on their worlds that completely did them dirty! while its not as bad as people think, i can also get why people would drop this series for its as dark and as ugly as they come. ala this is how uber dark and violent anime use to be back in the late 80s and 90s! |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5876 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I was talking about the genocide that the Redia Empire committed. A genocide fully supported by the citizens of the Redia Empire. Along with all the other war crimes that the Redia Empire is committing against all the other minor nations of the world. There is no justice to be had. There is no other nation or nations able to hold the Redia Empire accountable. The world is the Redia Empire's playground. There has been no discussion on how to hold the Redia Empire and its citizens accountable for their past and current genocidal actions and their other ongoing war crimes. Adonis doesn't have the power to get justice for the dead, only the rage to extract his pound of flesh against the Redia Empire, before they find a way to kill him. So he probably knows his path will lead to his death. Adonis spent 10 years imprisoned, in isolation with no human contact, conscious, and training his skills to use against the Redia Empire. He's probably not entirely sane either. Terrorism was mentioned, but that is not applicable as the Redia Empire has not signed any peace treaty. The Redia Empire is still in a state of war, and really, they continue to wage war across the globe against the other nations of the world too. In the Saga of Tanya the Evil, Tanya Degurechaff tried to explain to the General Staff that they were blinded by logic, and that the French were not going to do the logical thing. Considering what the Redia Empire has done to Adonis and the witches (dead by the Empire's genocidal campaign ) and the living suffering in other nations; why are we expecting moderation and logical thinking from Adnois. Does the Redia Empire and its citizens, who gleefully cheered and celebrated the suffering and death of the witches and who are currently waging war and slavery across the globe, deserve our humanity. The witches certainly were unable to stop the Redia Empire. And the remaining survivors are on the unavoidable path to extinction now. I think we are being unfair to Adonis, expecting logic and reasonableness from him, considering everything thing he has gone through and the world as it is. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18252 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I did think this series was getting marginally better with the Kino's Journey-like approach it took with episodes 8 and 9, but with the end of episode 10 it's gone full-bore misanthropic. Really feels like they brought Doroka back only so they could be mean to her again. It does feel like the series is trying to make commentary about worship of technology and integrating hate as a key component of national policy being soulless, destructive paths, but it sabotages itself on that by revealing that there was a mastermind with supremely selfish motives behind everything all along and having one of the worst senses of how to use humor I've ever seen in an anime title.
I'll finish this season out because I'm a little interested to see if the end of episode 10 means they're killing off Doroka again, but I probably won't be back if there's a second cour/season. |
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Aleister222
Posts: 8 |
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She is the only living character that is not absolute irredeemable trash, so she basically exists because if the protagonist gets hurt, literally no one would care. So yeah, she exists just for pity points. |
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Gnarth
Posts: 175 |
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There's nothing wrong with the show being "misanthropic", it can be interesting if done well. The problem is simply that it's absolute garbage. After the third episode everything just went downhill and the author probably has no plan and just puts out whatever he feels like every chapter. It's just one random event after another, one shock-value death after another, zero cohesion and utterly inept writing. Yeah, the most recent episode is the lowest point, but that's hardly surprising. I don't think Doroka is dead, she's probably just going to be blind for the rest of the season and likely give Adonis some more determination or whatever. Not that I care since she's an awful character that somehow remained hopeful and cheerful after witnessing hellish horrors.
The catastrophically terrible "animation" (that's an insult to actual animation, I apologize) is just the cherry on top. Somehow though, I keep coming back every week. I guess it's the kind of bad show that triggers my morbid curiosity, I just can't drop it. |
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 514 Location: Poland |
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The problem with Kino's Journey-like approach is that you can't really go there from total genocidal edgefest, and even edgefest was a failure, because - well, no one watches Goblin Slayer to see Slayer help goblins murder some party of adventurers he dislikes. That sucks. And without righteous edgefest, the series is boring, because it's not good enough to make ethical conundrums. Doroka is basically carboard-cutout nice and pure morality pet, while Adonis was only interesting due to his edgy energy, once he stops trying to genocide everyone there is no longer point to him at this moment of the story. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11431 |
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All I could think of while watching the opening minutes of Ep 11 was, "Oh, poor Jacki, having to watch this." After that, I just found myself laughing at all the ridiculous, over-the-top misogyny and graphic edge-violence. It's just a total parody of itself now. I guess it has been for weeks, but they just seem to be pulling out all the stops now, as if the storyboard meetings go like, "Whelp, what can we do that's even more gruesome and transgressive. Anybody? Doesn't have to make any sense or advance the story, just the bloodier or more grotesque, the better! What's that? spoiler[Eyeball clackers? Fist-rocket socket cautery!] Great! I love it!"
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18252 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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^
Yeah, I was rolling my eyes over episode 11 up until the last five minutes or so, and for pretty much the same reasons. However, I did find the twist at the end to be a bit interesting. We knew from earlier episodes that Doroka could be fairly powerful in the right circumstances, but Knightfall is an order of magnitude beyond that; I have to wonder if the other witches truly understood the extent of what she could do. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11431 |
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Seriously, Adonis needs to put a chain on his pen, like idiot-mittens. How many times has he lost it?
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Gnarth
Posts: 175 |
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Well, I gotta say this episode was somewhat of an improvement. I did like Doroka finally dropping her embarassing good girl attitude (she had to get her eyes gauged out for that to happen, but better late than never I guess) and the final twist of Adonis becoming her puppet.
If the animation wasn't an utter disgrace, this could've been a good guilty pleasure show, because as much as it is undeniably trash, I'm never bored. Also, it wasn't that gory, and I hope Doroka controlling Adonis doesn't mean we aren't getting some edgy torture on the bad guy; like, it's the least we deserve for sticking with this edge-fest to the end, right? |
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