Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Day I Became a God
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njprogfan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 1160 Location: A River Named Toms |
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HA! That's the funniest first line of an episode review I've ever read! And my sentiment exactly! |
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1558 |
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After watching Saki, all I know about mahjong is that riichi is when you intimidate the others by throwing a stick and pon is when you throw two or three tiles against the corner.
I also thought I knew what dora is (the tile with one dot), but the second season proved me wrong. I have no idea what dora is. Still, I think I got enough of an understanding about how the game flows and poker to kinda get how he was breaking the rules, most of the time. Where were the super powers though? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11349 |
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^ You mean Odin's? I took it that she taught him enough of the rules in a way that he could quickly absorb, so that he could recall them when the situations she foresaw triggered his memories and allowed him to "cheat" in the most effective way. In other words, she gave him a strategy of sorts for every hand he would actually end up playing, out of all the millions of possible permutations of the game he could've possibly faced.
"riichi is when you intimidate the others by throwing a stick" Lol.  I only know "dora" from Ace of Diamond Act II, where an American team thought the Japanese team was calling one of the players "Dora," when they were cheering him. Apparently it's just a word like "Alright!!" but now I wonder if it has its roots in mahjong?
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2514 |
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Ep5- It made me cry using Key's signature "special move" that they brought in from left field. In this case, for me it was because it connects to something in my life so "your mileage may vary". Not sure if it counts as good writing, but if the setup and how it played weren't handled very carefully as it was, it would have been cause for screaming and table-flipping. The humor interspersed still makes it fun overall. However, if Hina were truly omniscient, shouldn't she have known how Yota would screw up?
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stilldemented
 Posts: 232 |
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My takeaway from episode 5 is that the themes of this story are revolving around making the most out of the limited time you have left. Wanna confess to that girl you like? Do it. Want to meet your favorite celebrity? Not impossible to make that happen. Life is too short to squander it by getting caught up in life's hangups. Get out there. Live life. Have fun with it. Because it isn't forever. The end is coming sooner than anyone would ever expect.
And it isn't exactly lost on me that this story is coming after Jun Maeda has been dealing with health issues for a while now. He probably knew he had a heart condition while writing Angel Beats. His recent works sort of strike me as him reflecting on mortality or life after death. And it's looking like this show is setting up to do that once again. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11349 |
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While I was glad they got her dad out of the house finally, it still felt like he was bent on suicide to go join his wife, what with all that cheese... I could hear his arteries clogging up over the screaming and bgm.
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rizuchan
 Posts: 974 Location: Kansas |
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Nick, I'm kinda shocked you liked episode 6 so well, because I had the absolute polar opposite reaction to it. Like if I didn't normally worship the ground Maeda walks on, I would have dropped this show after this week. (Ironically, I was a bit moved by last week's episode, although I agree that Kakushigoto did it 10x better)
It's like... Yota gathers his harem (including the token little sister and older woman, both who do absolutely nothing but be eye candy and fill out the group) to go to a festival. Admittedly there are some funny moments. Then Hina gets stuck in a refrigerated truck and Yota and Ashura use their (classic Maeda) sports skills to save her. It's a wacky comedy script except suddenly there's sad music playing? It was tonal whiplash. And I just don't feel like Yota and Ashura have earned their bromance. The episode literally goes "Remember how we were like the ultimate basketball combo, but then I got hit by a truck and couldn't play anymore?" Maybe it's just been too many episodes since Ashura was introduced, but I don't feel like he's had enough screen time for me to feel the chemistry between him and Yota. Granted I probably would be enjoying this show more if the comedy was working for me, but it's not for some reason, even though I usually enjoy Maeda's comedy writing. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 2514 |
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^While the comedy is absolutely working for me, I fully agree that the mid-Ep crisis was out of place and seemed to be a really poor narrative excuse for the boys to get that little bit of backstory in. Like anyone would care. And I can think of no reason for the mahjong lady to be there let alone how there would be motivation for her to join Yota plus friends or how she would stay when she is continually ignored by her supposed sex interest. With how much Yota allows Hina to monopolize his attention, I don't see how Izanami or the other girls don't just angrily wander off. And how the cameo of a Charlotte character does anything for the show (were there that many fans?) is beyond me. I completely missed it with how forgettable that show and it's characters were. Overall, the Ep was a mess and next to being needless filler...
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1558 |
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Considering how dumb most of this shows' shenanigans have been, it makes me wonder why Ashura has been pretty much absent from all of them if they're supposed to be like this. At this point, even Charlotte was better. Let's really hope the finale wasn't also better. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 2514 |
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Ep7- Seems "fun, one special summer (and then tradegy)" is a theme in some of Maeda works and if the mentions of one Michiru (aka Hina Sato?), immune systems and the screenplay were hints, I hear echos of Air and we know where that goes...Food for thought...
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1558 |
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I still don't know where Air went. |
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shosakukan
Posts: 292 |
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I have re-read a volume of the Ace of Diamond Act II manga in the original which has a scene equivalent to the scene you had mentioned. In the scene in question, pitcher Umemiya Seiichi says, 'Doraa,' and other Japanese baseball players, too, say, 'Doraaa,' in response to Umemiya's 'Doraa.' Umemiya sometimes says, 'Doraa' when he gets heated in baseball games. That is a rough aggressive interjection which a jock, a martial artist or the like is likely to say when he is in action. It is like Kūjō Jōtarō/the Star Platinum Stand's saying, 'Ora' when he is fighting in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Umemiya's 'Doraa' is just an interjection, so it is not related to the mahjong term 'dora'. At least, it is not directly related to the mahjong term 'dora'. According to mahjong historian Asami Ryō, the mahjong term 'dora' is derived from the English word 'dragon'. A way to write the English word 'dragon' in the ateji style is '怒羅魂'. Umemiya's 'Doraa' is sometimes written as '怒羅亜' in the ateji style in the manga. The 'Dora-' part and the 'dra-' part have the same kanji. So if you take the ateji into account, in a sense, perhaps it can be said that there is a very thin (accidental) connection between Umemiya's 'Doraa' and the mahjong term 'dora'. Like '怒羅亜', to write words in the aggressive ateji style is part of Japanese delinquents' subculture. Since Umemiya is a guy whose appearance is delinquent-ish (so, in the scene, an American baseball player says, 'Elvis (Presley as a rebel)'), his '怒羅亜' interjection is fitting for him. In Gambler Jikochūshinha, a well-known mahjong manga by Katayama Masayuki, the protagonist's name is Mochisugi Dorao. His given name is derived from the mahjong term 'dora', and his name is wordplay on 'Having too many dora.' |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1558 |
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No need to go too far, Crazy Diamond does use "dora". |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11349 |
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@ shosakukan Ooh, thanks for that. Very interesting. Every time I feel like I'm almost starting to get a tenuous handle on how Japanese works, there's always some new wrinkle that makes me give up entirely.
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shosakukan
Posts: 292 |
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It's a pleasure. Even Dr Donald Keene (in his young days) wrote Japanese text which seemed to be stylistically odd to the eyes of cultured Japanese people. You need not hurry when you learn Japanese. Festina lente. |
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