Forum - View topicBlade & Soul (TV).
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Next |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15505 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
|
||
What you wrote was what my thought were. I was kind of actually trying to point it out, a couple times at face value he talked about doing the right thing that he actually looked like he might fit in as a protagonist, and the town leader a villain. But it was when you looked at facts that he probably did not need to order the kill of the guards, and that the town leader looked like he cared for the girl, that it seemed to all turn on its head. Personally I found it quite welcome that they could play off expectations. |
|||
|
|||
Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
|
||
|
From a moral viewpoint, Psycho-Dude was right: the villagers are growing plants which are poisonous and which are being used by the Param government to Do Bad Things. But being right morally doesn't give you carte blanche to do whatever you want to try to correct the situation. That's where he went wrong: he did evil things to stop something he regarded as evil.
Is it okay to do anything in order to survive? Not in my book. So I can see Psycho-Dude's viewpoint. But the ends do not justify the means, and this episode was basically an illustration of that concept. I don't have a lot of sympathy for any of the villagers, but unlike Psycho-Dude, I am not entirely without compassion. If he had been sane, he should've just snuck in and found a way to burn the fields without killing anyone. That still would've probably led a lot of villagers to starve, but at least he wouldn't be murdering them outright, and some might find jobs elsewhere. |
|||
|
|||
Yttrbio
 Posts: 3653 |
|
||
|
I think there's a difference between ambiguous morality and plain old nihilism, and Blade and Soul feels a lot more like the latter to me. I don't see any message or commentary, just a bunch of empty "some people believed stuff, now they're dead" shrugging.
|
|||
|
|||
Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23862 |
|
||
|
How can you not be seeing the message and commentary? It's not particularly subtle. The message is: life is complicated. You can be intellectually "right" about an issue, but if your methods of correcting the wrong are extreme, then you end up being worse than those you are trying to stop. Ignoring these and other messages and just dismissing the show as nihilistic is an incredibly shallow and trite reading of the material, imo.
Not a single character we have seen so far has anything remotely resembling a nihilistic outlook. As has been noted, even Alka herself is showing some signs of an evolving attitude. |
|||
|
|||
|
Yttrbio
Posts: 3653 |
|
||
|
It's because it's so unsubtle that I can't really see any messaging. I don't see any of the judgment about the characters that you perceive, unless you mean the over-the-top "look, I went crazy!" thing, which is personality, not commentary. The fact that someone ends up dead or nuts doesn't mean he's wrong, aside from the writers' assertion that it is so.
Let me put it this way: If the writers wanted to show that being right but extreme is bad, they should have been able to show that without the guy being a psycho. In the end, the thing that's wrong with him isn't his beliefs or even his methods, but the fact that he's a freakin' nutcase. Which, to me, obscures any commentary about the underlying issue that you see. I realize it's a common writing tool to put a sign over someone's head saying "look, bad!" but to me, it's also a signal that the writer doesn't believe the characters actions are sufficiently bad to make that point. |
|||
|
|||
|
Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23862 |
|
||
|
I would agree that his character was handled inelegantly. But it's a bit of a jump to go from, "well, they didn't handle that aspect as well as they could have so this is just a bunch of empty 'some people believed stuff, now they're dead' shrugging." As I've said before, the show deserves props for what it did, relative to many other anime that don't ever bother to try and give opposing sides their own credible strengths and weaknesses.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18227 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
|
||
|
I have only been half-heartedly watching this show so far (if I get episodes backed up, this one is near the bottom of my priority list), but episode 5 did impress me a bit. I was also a little disappointed when Psycho-Dude when overboard, and agree that what the series is doing isn't subtle, but I found the series' willingness to explore the moral ambiguity of the situation to be interesting and very much liked the mayor not coming off as the stereotypical exploitative bastard. And I agree that Alka is evolving, if very slowly.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Eivion
Posts: 569 |
|
||
|
I liked the idea of what episode 5 was trying to do, but I think the lack of subtly hurt things. Whats more there was a lack of context of what the drugs actually did pretty much until the epilogue info dump. Whats more they hurt the grey area issue by making the guy completely insane and clearly more interested in simply being right than actually dealing with the issue of the drugs.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Tuor_of_Gondolin
Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
|
||
|
Yeah, they intentionally weakened Pscho-Dude's position by making him so shrill and over-the-top about it. I suppose if it were handled more subtly, there was fear that people wouldn't get it. I think that's a reasonable fear, but it's still unfortunate. Near the end there, I was just hoping someone would kill him just to SHUT HIM UP. The Proprietress should've taken care of things a bit sooner than she did. I'm not sure what she was waiting for... maybe she was holding back in case Alka acted on her boss's order.
This is not a great series, but I do find it interesting, especially in the willingness to not have everything clean up nicely at the end. Every story told so far has basically been a Bad Ending for someone or other -- the girl village chief, the gang leader, the sister, and now the mistress/concubine. Only the bounty hunter has avoided heartbreak city, and that's mainly due to plot armor IMO -- I guess the Proprietress has, too, but none of the episodes has focused on her yet. I just hope this all ends up amounting to something. I'm not too keen on series keep getting depressing without any sunshine at the end. |
|||
|
|||
|
getchman
He started it Posts: 9122 Location: Bedford, NH |
|
||
|
was her master some sort of anthropomorphized dog?
|
|||
|
|||
Bango
 Posts: 1122 |
|
||
Ep 5 - Another fantastic ep, adding even more grey to our palette by shedding some dark on a character I'd previously thought as very bright. I'm a bit sad that Psycho-dude ended up being some crazed radical though. It kind of spoiled the interesting mojo of the ep. He was much better as just an eccentric guy trying to assert his justice. I could accept him paying for guard murders because of how the world has presented itself but him loosing his shit kind of collapsed the whole "no real right answer" thing for me. Glad to see the sister from last ep is doing well working alongside Fingers and Hodor. But when she ran into Loana I couldn't help but think "with these character designs, some day this little girl is going to grow up like that." and it kind of made me want to see more mid-point aged characters just to see how they get there. It's a pretty crazy difference. |
|||
|
|||
|
KLAC
Exempt from Grammar Rules
 Posts: 1122 |
|
||
|
ep.6
spoiler[varel having vision seeing herself one in black & other in white fighting each other give showing different view how they been slayed. give varel & her crew call in destroy rebel group give in the rebels yuu find out is whole trap both rebel & some of palam want varel gone. way varel is from being no emotion, scars, etc (yea part ran "clean" varel scars) then yuu tried reason varel to no fight cue attack mode. then varel go in charge rebel & yet see that all trap regardless full dark aura she slice them all in halves give seeing them as her white version & arka. all that done with 2 crew also beat down army varal it all the same return to palam base going don't trick varel or else include part ran talking to someone on this yet dog goes boom. etc roana & crew take on the go give offer hazuki join them yet take only for just hunt arka get bounty yet karen with all happen indeed revenge is silly.] |
|||
|
|||
leatherhead333
 Posts: 1187 Location: Kansas |
|
||
|
WOW! AIka was so outrageously boring the writers forgot to put her in the episode! (besides that brief moment we see her at the end).
Good riddance if you ask me. Jin Varrel isn't much better though that's probably because she has some connection to AIka. Either way this episode felt kind of pointless again. We get to see a new batch of characters only to see them die. Aside from some political/internal issues within Jin's organization not much is happening here. Seems like this anime is trying to reach Superjail with the death count lol. |
|||
|
|||
|
DuskyPredator
Posts: 15505 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
|
||
|
Episode 6
I actually do think quite a bit is being shown. For starters we found out about Yuu, who was also apparently a student under the master, but he seems to not have any desire to seek revenge. And Jin seems to be a bit of a mystery, like her spoiler[hand having the same wound that Alka has, and her body is tainted by her own power]. She sees spoiler[her enemies as white pallet versions of herself, which can look similar to Alka], and even people spoiler[within her own army want to get rid of her]. Could be something about running from her own weakness, but nothing is sure. And Alka appearing at the end, what I took from it is that Alka is doing something else in the mean time, like going to the beach. Maybe she has started to come to terms that she is just blindly following what she knows and has decided to go and explore the world, and herself. Actually now that I think about it, was the time she was blind a few episodes back a not to subtle nod to what she was like, it seems that since then she has changed a bit. Alka is not the only one questioning either, what is the deal with the proprietress? |
|||
|
|||
|
Bango
Posts: 1122 |
|
||
|
ep6 -
Likely my least fav ep so far, despite the many plot revelations. I attribute it to the awkwardly long epilogue montage at the end and this weeks Redshirts being kind of undeveloped compared to some of the past ones, likely because they had to take time out for Jin. Jun's Big Guy was hilarious this episode though. RWAAAAR! You tell em, Big Guy! And we even got some pseudo-yuri. Also as much as I like cowgirl's tits she's really starting to annoy me now. I guess the ep was just a mash of things they needed to say around a throwaway plot. |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group