Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: So I'm a Spider, So What?
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Cryten
 Posts: 1007 |
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Its okay to not like that. It is kind of the central premise of this series. And tons of spoilers of all the coming novels. As the anime said. This is a broken dieing world, we learnt that in volume 2. You just dont really believe it until you start learning why its dieing. Much like how the elves style themselves as benevolent but isolationist keepers of wisdom but we learn just how little they care for life. At all.
The shows plays a big joke on the Audience by subverting their expectations. That heroes achieve good, that demons commit evil, that elves are wise and that main characters can save everyone. We arnt in no kids cartoon here. I am reminded of Tekkaman (Technoman) Slade. Good intentions are all very well but one hero cant stop a world apocalypse. Interestingly I didn't like the amoral actions of slaughtering (not fighting slaughtering) enemy armies one sidedly in Reincarnated as a Slime. Because the show had a very upstand moral system that it threw away and then totally ignored the action. But in Spider I am much more okay with it. Because this show was always about survival in impossibly harsh conditions. It was just its scope that expanded. You didn't quite get the feel for it in the anime but Kumoko single handily reduced the population of the middle and upper stratums of the labyrinth on one continent. Last edited by Cryten on Wed Jul 07, 2021 10:22 am; edited 1 time in total |
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JaffaOrange
 Posts: 251 |
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It's revealed or rather clarified later on spoiler[that Ariel and basically everyone in her party have an ultra low opinion of humans and demons and so killing a bunch doesn't really bother them. That puts them on the same level as....just about every other genocidal maniac tbh. ]
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MagicianMan
Posts: 120 |
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This i something I actually do have an issue with. I feel like the story goes back and forth on whetherspoiler[ Ariel hates people and seeks to cruelly punish them for what happened to Sariel or she's really a deeply kind soul that has reluctantly burdened herself with doing what has to be done.] Both portrayals feel a little incongruous with each other. Kumoko's apathy and selfishness are at least consistent character traits. |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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While I enjoyed the last episode....I still have a ton of questions...(like why couldn't the vampire parents defend themselves and protect their own kid??)
But I don't think I can take a second season...lots of scenes were so boring that I couldn't even pay attention...and do I have a clue about what's even happening in the story now? No, not really. Kumoko's funny and amusing and all...but I don't think she can save it for me. I'm just very checked out of this series. |
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blahmoomoo
Posts: 471 |
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Sophia's parents weren't vampires. She was made to be a vampire due to Administrator D's whims. |
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Nordhmmer
Posts: 1028 |
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The vampire kid's parents were just humans.nobles, but just plain ole human beings. Well the reincarnation side is,in essence, the beginning of the end of the story- You really,out side of a few, very brief teasers, do not get the gist of the main plot. What you're missing is the 13 years worth of White's (Kumoko is a fan nickname for her nameless spider form) & Ariel's adventures and machinations that led up to the battle happening at the end of the anime. Those 13 years would be covered in season 2,3 and so on till it was time to adapt volume 14. |
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1586 |
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Yeah, I think you have the same complaints as me. There are the uninteresting parts (and even Kumoko's side of the story was woefully repetitive) and then there's the series witholding vital information to contextualize what they do give us for far FAR too long. I think it's very telling that the LN readers in this thread are VERY into this particular series. |
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Chiibi
Posts: 4829 |
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Ah, thank you for explaining that part. It's likely the series mentioned it and I just didn't remember. I love LNs, (yes, I really do) but they don't always translate well to the screen...I think because there is just too much information sometimes, yeah? |
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Cryten
Posts: 1007 |
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Believe me Yuev the light novels are also quite light on descriptive information and the self analysing moments are repetitive and take too long.
Whats so moorish about the series, I think, is the indepth world building being hidden from us that you work out from context, implication and then finally from later reveals. Combined with a pitch black survival story. It has many faults but the novels where very enjoyable for me. For one thing it utterly lacks in decription. The elves forest was a forest, humans characters are decribed like: Old guy with a robe, young looking human, preety girl with an inquisitive face. No one whoes a fan of the series should think its a faultless writing style. But the plot engaged me, while the survival situations kept me entertained enough to keep going. However when the plot and combat are the main things that make a series, it shouldnt be a surprise that they become the biggest talking points for existing fans. If you think of the series as the prototypical game based anime then you would be wright. But the series uses that as its plot, wraps it around its characters and strongly makes it its own. |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1586 |
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Oh, I didn't imply that the problems are exclusive to the anime.
From the comments here, about how this thing is form volume X and this other one from volume Y and how A correlates to B, it seems to be that the author has a very well delineated global plan, but isn't so good at exposing its pieces and building a narrative. Or at introducing sub-arcs that are engaging and make sense, on their own, in the moment. As for repetitive, yeah there's all that skill diving but Kumoko's side of the story, globally, was also very repetitive in its structure. In the end, I believe the medium this story would work best at is as a game. Not just because of its inspirations but also: -skills and items offering lore and foreshadowing works better when you actively navigate through them at your leisure than as page-long dumps -games are an active medium, so it puts the reader in a better mindspace to play with the jigsaw puzzle global mystery -a game can give you a "story tree" of sorts or a mindmap so you can freely navigate at any moment to any part you're iffy on or see how things relate to each other (Vanillaware's Odin Sphere and 13 Sentinels easily come to mind) |
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Fluwm
 Posts: 897 |
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I mean, the two perspectives are not mutually exclusive: morality is not scalable. What makes KumoDesu so interesting is that it explores that: spoiler[Kumoko's actions are morally justifiable at the planetary scale, but not the personal scale; Shun's actions are likewise justifiable at the personal scale, but not the planetary scale. D's actions are unjustifiable at both personal and planetary scales, but there's an implication that she may be doing the "right thing" at the cosmic scale.] It allows for a conflict where both principal parties are "doing the right thing," while still perpetuating "evil" in the world. You're kinda meant to be examining the morality of everyone in this story--not one character is reducible to simply being "good" or "evil." |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1586 |
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Described that way, it kind of reeks of a "both sides" narrative...
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Nordhmmer
Posts: 1028 |
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It(the author trying to make things grey) goes with the "the big reveal",this story's twist on MCs. To boil this plot down,and as simplified as it is there's still WN/LN spoilers-The anime does shows snippets of the main plot: MA energy = Think FF7's Lifestream spoiler[ Humans use MA energy,Dragons oppose this, War happens between Dragons & Humans. Dragons,losing, say screw this and take their ball- in this case the bulk of the planet's MA energy- elsewhere into the Multiverse. Once advanced human civilization collapses. Ariel's mother steps in-sacrifices herself- to sustain the System/planet's MA energy. With White's help,Ariel intends to save her mother,but in order to save her half the human population would need to die to restore the planet's MA energy fully.] |
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MagicianMan
Posts: 120 |
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When I first tried reading the web novel I almost dropped it around the point Kumoko beat the fire dragon and was workshoping Araba's demise. The parallel mind conversations were a pain to read and I didn't feel invested anymore.
What changed my mind was skipping ahead to the White=Kumoko reveal and again to the aftermath of the elf village battle. It was reading all the user coments of "system" this and "MA" that reignited my interest in the story and I started over with the light novel. It went on to become my favorite LN ever, but it took being heavily spoiled on the broad strokes of the overall plot to keep me in. While I do regret not experiencing certain reveals naturally, It kind of doesn't matter because I probably wouldn't have kept reading to see them. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5861 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I personally don't see what you all see. I have read the light novels, manga, and watched the anime. I think Kumoko has been justified in her decisions. I won't speak to the future, spoiler[her travels with Ariel] because it seems to be much murkery.
Not saying she is a poster child for rightousness or anything like that, but I think she has made the best of her situation that she can. If she didn't get strong in the Labrinyth, she would never have been able to walk around in the above ground world. And I am willing to grant her alot of slack, because of the good she has done, but also, because by being born a monster, she has a 'Kill Me" sign on her back. |
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