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EP. REVIEW: Trickster


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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 2:41 am Reply with quote
Episode 5

I'm still trying to figure out how Inoue expected to open that ceiling with his fingers, and how Kasuda actually got it open with just his hands. I'd imagine there's like gears controlling that, not to mention that each half weighs a ton.

I still like the series, but I'm disappointed that they had such a great setting and underutilized it so badly.

What's the flowerpot death toll up to now?
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Merida



Joined: 21 Feb 2012
Posts: 1945
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 10:44 am Reply with quote
Anne wrote:
Quote:
Since Trickster is frequently immune to subtlety...


...to put it mildly. I was Rolling Eyes -ing all the way through this ep.. If only the anime managed to make me care enough about any of these characters, the ham-fisted drama (probably) wouldn't bother me so much.

And come on , Twenty-Faces, i had such high hopes for you! Sad
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 11:06 am Reply with quote
I don't get why Twenty Faces thought mass murdering a bunch of cops would decrease people's trust in the police. Certainly tricking cops would make them look incompetent and decrease people's trust in them. But then killing them would just make them more sympathetic and any decrease in trust is lost. Public opinion towards the police would actually probably improve after that. Cop killers aren't really beloved, to make a bit of an understatement. He would have been better off just sticking with his no killing rule. But expecting a competent and competently made villain from a writer of this caliber is probably a fool's errand.
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Miyanoai



Joined: 17 Feb 2014
Posts: 327
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 7:28 pm Reply with quote
zrnzle500 wrote:
I don't get why Twenty Faces thought mass murdering a bunch of cops would decrease people's trust in the police. Certainly tricking cops would make them look incompetent and decrease people's trust in them. But then killing them would just make them more sympathetic and any decrease in trust is lost. Public opinion towards the police would actually probably improve after that. Cop killers aren't really beloved, to make a bit of an understatement. He would have been better off just sticking with his no killing rule. But expecting a competent and competently made villain from a writer of this caliber is probably a fool's errand.


I think the point was to break the police's trust of each other? Like basically they were lead into danger, how can they trust their superiors anymore?, weakened trust equals weakened force, etc.
I can't say for sure but that's what I'd assume he may have been going for but it would have helped to see the police be useful in the first place.

Personally I didn't find Kobayashi to frustrating? It's more like he's slowly learning to actually care about others, or at least work with them. If not, him being stingy about his burgers was at least amusing. But I'm sure we'll learn more about him eventually.

I really did enjoy Katsuda and Inoue's relationship, even with how short it was, but the flips between flashbacks and present day made it a bit confusing as to what happened. I had thought both his legs were damaged at first but then we see him partially stand at times. Being a mental issue makes it a little more believable though I wonder how he had a prosthetic foot in the first ep when he still has his actual foot.
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Hameyadea



Joined: 23 Jun 2014
Posts: 3679
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 11:11 am Reply with quote
Kobayashi's force-field seems to be quite fluid in order to fit the scene's requirements, rather than constant; at times it will trigger on slow moving objects/beings, and at times it will let them interact with Kobayashi. Likewise with fast-moving objects; in one of the previous episodes -- episode #2, I believe -- Kobayashi's ability prevented him from getting wet whilst being submerged in the river, and in episode #5's river scene, he was wet.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Tue Nov 08, 2016 1:59 pm Reply with quote
So in this factory where it's "Safety First!" did they all go home and leave the stove on? Of course I had the same problem with that setup in Terminator 2 (in which Schwarzenegger also used the "I'll be back" line before driving a police van through the Cyberdyne building).

Quote:
Sleeping peacefully, his force field rebuffs an approaching bug in an almost gentle manner instead of vaporizing it.

So that's what that was about! I wasn't sure what to make of it, but that sounds like a good explanation to me. All I knew for sure is that a beetle like that wouldn't sound like a mosquito buzzing you. Smile
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Posts: 5113
Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 2:38 am Reply with quote
Wasn't sure I liked Trickster, but I'm intrigued by the mystery around Kobayashi so I keep watching it. Besides for Kobayashi, everything else is kind of boring--Hanasaki bothers me more because he seems too incompetent to be a boy detective (especially since its basically an excuse for him to skip as much school as possible. What's the deal with that?) Inoue's drama is ham- fisted, and his reaction toward Kobayashi is the opposite of endearing (maybe if you had shown him the least bit of empathy, he would have been more willing to protect you later). Hikikomori hacker girl is such an annoying cliche, and Akechi is a womanizing cypher. Until ep 7. Oh man, this ep played into all my sympathy points--abusive father, PTSD from serving in a warzone (he was a mercenary, if I read that correctly), a sense of misplaced guilt over the deaths of his biological & adoptive dads ("My Two Dads, and How I Killed Them Both, a Memoir")...and we even got a tantalizing look into 20 Faces' past, who was, if I read all the flashbacks right, a fellow mercenary, and possibly Akechi's lover, and might be female (or was female identifying, and is now male identifying? Who knows what they'll go with). In any case, I'm intrigued. Not so much in 20 Faces, who still reads like a cliche evil villain (anyone else get Vicious from Cowboy Bebop vibes?), but in Akechi, and his complicated psyche. He is hiding a lot behind that womanizing, carefree exterior, and I want to see more of what makes him tick and how he hides it all.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 12:23 am Reply with quote
So...did Sousuke kill Akechi because he was a bad shot or fail to shoot the guy holding him at gunpoint? And why could Hanasaki shoot Kobayashi with the water gun? If his shield is reflexive, shouldn't it have repelled at least the first shot since he wasn't expecting it?

I didn't think this episode was very good, but then I watched Bloodivores after it, which made it look like a goddamn masterpiece of storytelling.
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 12:26 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
So...did Sousuke kill Akechi because he was a bad shot or fail to shoot the guy holding him at gunpoint? And why could Hanasaki shoot Kobayashi with the water gun? If his shield is reflexive, shouldn't it have repelled at least the first shot since he wasn't expecting it?

I didn't think this episode was very good, but then I watched Bloodivores after it, which made it look like a goddamn masterpiece of storytelling.


People are watching Bloodivores?! Shocked
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 1:02 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
So...did Sousuke kill Akechi because he was a bad shot or fail to shoot the guy holding him at gunpoint?

I think Sousuke just felt guilty that Akechi Sr. was killed right in front of him and he couldn't do anything to prevent it. Classic survivor's guilt.

Quote:
And why could Hanasaki shoot Kobayashi with the water gun? If his shield is reflexive, shouldn't it have repelled at least the first shot since he wasn't expecting it?

I wondered that, too. I think it's because he was more relaxed than usual--as he becomes more friendly with Hanasaki, he literally let's his guard down.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 2:07 am Reply with quote
zrnzle500 wrote:
People are watching Bloodivores?! Shocked

Yeah. Smile The story, such as it is, is kinda interesting, but it's practically a textbook of all the shortcuts you can take to make a series. It's a lot like seeing someone who got dressed in the dark wearing a decent suit inside out, so all the seams and unclipped threads and tailor's marks show. I'm embarrassed for them. But I'll probably ride it out at least until I have some idea of what's going on. Which they'll probably save til the end for some big "It was me, Dio!" reveal.
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chaccide



Joined: 16 Aug 2016
Posts: 295
PostPosted: Tue Nov 22, 2016 9:44 pm Reply with quote
At this point I only care about Kobayashi. This episode had very little of him so I was bored, except when wondering how they walked the cows into that complex. I enjoyed the thought of them riding the train with one (I know, they used trucks, but cows walking around in the big city are more fun to imagine).
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Merida



Joined: 21 Feb 2012
Posts: 1945
PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2016 10:37 am Reply with quote
I probably care about Kobayashi the least (which doesn't say much, though since i don't particularly care about about any of these characters...), unless "caring" means wanting to find out how he got his weird affliction. But at this point i'm almost willing to bet that it's connected to some kind of mommy or daddy issue...
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2016 7:16 pm Reply with quote
Episode 9

Quote:
If Twenty Faces picking up Hanasaki from the gutter was supposed to be a shocking twist, it failed miserably.

As soon as he went screaming through the obviously "bad" parts of town in his bright orange track suit, I said to myself, "Guess it's about time for Twenty Faces to show up," and five seconds later, right on cue. The resolution to the standoff seemed really anticlimactic somehow. They spent so much time pointedly showing us the pigeons last week and I'm still not even sure what they were using them for exactly, at least not the massive fleet they were keeping. Emergency squab rations? If Nii-san finally saw that Mom actually was betraying them, why was he still so pissed off at Hanasaki?

I'm actually kind of liking Kobayashi more, now that he's become less actively sullen and contrary and is just shrugging and going with the flow. And I am curious about the body he found wherever it was he was diving, so I guess they haven't completely lost me. But this was never a very tightly woven story to begin with and it's really starting to fray as we head into the final quarter.
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Merida



Joined: 21 Feb 2012
Posts: 1945
PostPosted: Wed Nov 30, 2016 10:01 am Reply with quote
Anne wrote:
Quote:
Kobayashi's an emotionless cold fish, Inoue way too stuck up to contribute anything but reprimands, Akechi is unnecessarily cruel and Hanasaki is just as loud and tiring in his grief as he was in his genki-ness.


This, pretty much. You almost gotta admire the show for making its characters so consistently unlikable.

I'm completely ready to root for Twenty Faces now, even though he's not exactly been a very convincing villain so far. I'm hoping for some of his fashion sense to rub off on Hanasaki at the very least... Wink
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