Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka
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Nordhmmer
Posts: 1028 |
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Sorry...but she is an illegal magical girl- The bondage-ques swimsuit-their signature outfit- well the preview for next week.... |
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Sailor Sedna
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Episode 6 probably has to be one of my favorites, it had things that weren't in the manga but it managed to still be really good and still had the spirit of it, plus we got to see the girls interact more, see more of their characters/personalities
Episode 8 unfortunately (and its manga counterpart), from what I can tell based on my reading of the manga, besides looking like probably the most controversial anime episode in a while, has some tonal whiplash problems, it focuses on some pretty fucked up and dark stuff but tries to couple it with fanservice? Fukami could have balanced the tones better. And well, just gonna warn you ahead of time, Rebecca, Kurumi there may creep you out... And not gonna lie, as much as I like Sacchu, I'm sick of seeing one of those "Magical Girl Trivia" things, it interrupts the fight and ruins the pacing, and are yet another example of how just because something like explanations work in a manga (they had explanations of the thing in the manga but didn't need said Pikachu lookalike saying it with some game show-like title), doesn't mean it'll work in an anime!! 
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1595 |
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Now THIS is completely gratuitious torture porn (even if it's way softer than what happened to Nozomi).
Sure, they wanted to give more characterization to Kurumi showing the degree of her fuckedupness, but the context it occurs in is tremendously stupid. So we get this psychotic but weak girl, who is scared to the bone of what's about to happen (of course. Can't have torture porn without a girl's face twisted in sheer fear) and who at the first question rushes to speak everything she knows. At this point it should be obvious that fear won't squeeze any more information out of her since she's already pretty much broken. But why think of any other methods when we can be treated to a full course of torture/BDSM dungeon imagery, right? The dialogue wanted to depict Kurumi as a yandere willing to do anything to help Asuka but the scene itself paints her as a sadist enjoying herself. By how it was edited the anime seemed to want to be done with it ASAP but wow what a ridiculous and demeaning scene. |
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TanyaTheEvil
 Posts: 332 |
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Despite what the reviews may say this is one my favorite anime of the season. I am so enjoying this anime very much so
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Animeking1108
Posts: 1244 |
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It took eight episodes for it to go full-Magical Girl Site, I see.
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Nordhmmer
Posts: 1028 |
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Good news is the anime looks to be aiming to conclude around ch24.So for now there are no more torture scenes upcoming. But for those who wish to read the manga...Torture porn....?Chapter 13 here comes close but does not beat chapter 39 for torture porn. |
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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I'm not sure whether I want to continue with this one.
I think War Nurse is supposed to still be a sympathetic character, but the way I see it she would have to be a complete psychopath to behave the way she did: torturing the captured magical girl when it was completely unneccessary (and doing it in an eyerolling BDSM way), then coming to the beach like nothing happened. Not to mention her insane possessive attitude toward Asuka. How is War Nurse any different than the blond girl with the scissors (sorry I forget her name)? And I'm not just saying this based on the fact that she does 'evil' things, it's the state of mind and attitude that accompanies it. For example, I don't think Giess is a psychopath, nor is Chisato. |
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Joshua Zarate
Posts: 2062 |
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Episode 8 became the closest for an anime to nearing my limit in a long time. I would say more, but I think this recent review does a solid job in describing what I would have written down. All I’ll say now is if there’s somehow a way this series finds to go even further in a future episode, then I’ll probably just drop it then and there. Damn, this is difficult to stomach.
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TanyaTheEvil
Posts: 332 |
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I don't understand why everyone does not like this anime, this is the whiole reason why I like this one. It shows a certain reality of war, torture and evil in the heart of everyone of us. Look outside our own door and this kind of thing is happening somewhere in our world. I love the drama, action, the heartaches of this anime. It is exactly what I like and this has become a favorite of mine
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1595 |
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Because it has a buttload of hard themes which is something not everyone wants to consume in their entertainment. Moreover, while it's being quite competent it still isn't completely handling those themes with tye delicacy they theserve - and introducing a whole bunch of them all at once won't help. It isn' t using them solely for shock value as I expected but it isn't quite where it should be. And to top it off it is obsessed with fanservice, which isn't something bad per se but the timing is usually awful. Case in point: this episode's needlessly erotic needless torture scene and the swimsuit service surrounding it. |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3653 |
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TanyaTheEvil
Posts: 332 |
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Yeah, I understand and from the beginning of the anime i kinda saw this coming.I really like animes like this one. I like animes like vivid strike, magical girl site and especially saga of tanya the evil. These are just a few where they show protaganist getting beat up, ect. Except Tanya is OP and is badass to the max
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Terrible90sDub
 Posts: 168 |
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I suppose we would be seeing less comments in opposition if this anime were strictly sticking to one aspect. As it is, my guess is that it's bringing in different crowds watching it for opposing reasons. For example, I would've given up on it long ago if not for Asuka's storyline and how rare it is for me to see trauma portrayed the way it is with her. The military aspects also interest me, since it seems to have a decent understanding of some of the conflicts that have gone on around the world. I'm neutral to the girls with arms aspect, as well as the fanservice to a degree, but am not a fan of torture porn or painful magical girl stuff when it's framed in a way that seems more gratuitous than meaningful. Kurumi's scene in particular didn't really seem to be necessary, and only raised a lot of questions about the protagonists. One explanation I can see is that Kurumi decides to view those she tortures as the same as the people who bullied her, so feels justified in acting like that on top of trying to prevent Asuka from experiencing it, but the framing of that scene was more just to show torture as playful and sexy instead of the reality of war or evil in the heart of everyone. Adding to that, it actually seemed... more fanservicey than in the manga? I only read the manga recently, and unless I somehow slept through a page (which, knowing me, is entirely possible), it had some of the same expressions, but didn't have the more sexual paddling scene. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Wow. If anything, I think you sold the sadism in this episode short. Also, does the manga-ka have some sort of severed limb fetish? Is that a thing?
At the beginning of episode 8, I thought perhaps this show had gone into "so bad, it's good territory." But then it just kept getting worse... (Step?)Dad tries to sell daughter into sex slavery, doesn't work, gets drunk and *beats her out of her wheelchair.* Daughter barely reacts as (Step?)Dad's head is *crushed* in front of her when Giess comes to "save" her (I know he was abusive, but he was also her only adult caretaker for a year, and the way she wasn't fighting back or even screaming when he beat her made me think she might've loved him and internalized some "I deserve this" message from his beatings so I was surprised when she didn't react to his death at all, but maybe I put more thought into her character than the writers did). That's all so bad it's...ridiculous. Then there's Kurumi's torture scene which shows she's more sadistic than we were initially led to believe. She even suggests that she's injecting a drug into the mercenary so that she can torture her *sexually* (the mention of how the drug enhances senses and that Kurumi might touch her "sensitive parts"). Asuka, I don't think "protecting" Kurumi is a good thing for humanity. Or maybe it is, because who knows what she'll do if she thinks she lost your protection! But what I found most offensive, besides Chisato being just as violent as her (Step?)Dad all along, was the way the show exaggerated the plight of real-life Somalian child soldiers as a prop to prove how dark and gritty they could get. I was just watching a Netflix documentary series, Dangerous World of Comedy, which interviewed a real former Somalian child soldier, as well as a real Liberian former warlord and a former ISIS fighter (Here's a good article about it), and Spec-Ops Asuka's came across as especially gross by exaggerating real-life misery for its "dark and gritty" cred. Can this show get even darker from here? Will every character lose an arm or leg or both by the last episode? I'm curious, but I really hope the show focuses more on Asuka (she's still the best character on the show) and less on...everyone else. |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2619 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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I had a whole paragraph about this that I ended up cutting because I couldn't make it not sound like a tangent, which I thought undermined my point. But yes. I don't think the story entirely understands all of the elements it's using in pursuit of a "real-world" feel and so ends up foisting most of that work onto setting Kurumi up as a foil to characters like Asuka, Chisato, and Sayoko, but there's too much fanservice or creepy sexuality involved to truly make that foil figure work. (Kurumi sometimes reminds me a little of Astolofo's master from Fate/Apocrypha, which is not a good thing.) If the focus had remained on Asuka, it would be a much stronger, albeit still difficult, show. |
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