spotto: (hong kong *STAAAAAARE*)
I saw some Xena gifs on my dashboard earlier and that lead to a thought about something completely different, but sort of in the same nostalgic light. My brother watched Xena a ton when it was airing and I was but a child then, but sometimes I stuck around and watched with him. I really loved Gabrielle. There is one episode I actually remember watching where Xena was being forced into this sort of torture rack with hundreds, maybe even thousands of nails lining the board, but she had such amazing body strength to not only keep herself from being punctured but managed to like punch or kick off her assailant or someone. I also remember Xena dying (or maybe she was just incapacitated, the memory is a blur) and Gabrielle had to find some sort of weird bean-like food to revive her.

Then I remember my brother playing Final Fantasy IV and he named the green summoner child after me, who was eaten at some point and I got upset, but eventually she returned as an adult to kick-ass. He also played the Sailor Moon Another Story RPG, and Sailor Moon, which is getting an awesome remake in the coming months, is an extremely nostalgic thing for me. My brother loved it to the point  that my mom knew what Anime we were watching and even bought (probably bootlegged) VHS SUBBED Sailor Moon movies for my brother. (I liked it too, but at the time I think my brother did even more) And of course of my favourite cartoon growing up was probably Powerpuff Girls.

Now the one reoccurring theme in all of that are female characters. This isn't a coincidence or anything. I'm a girl and naturally are drawn to girl characters because they should be role models to me and y'know, also being a girl should identify with them a tad more than the boys. But that wasn't always the case obviously. My brother also watched the first season of Digimon and I watched it with him every Saturday morning. More seasons of Digimon came by later (I watched the second one, but my brother did not as he only enjoyed the first) and skipped the third because it seemed really slow and boring to me (well at least now I appreciate the greatness that was Tamers P:) and then for some reason returned to Digimon in season four despite its unpopularity because holy shit sentai! I watched Power Rangers a ton as a kid too, though I was especially young when the first Mighty Morphin series aired, so I don't recall too much about it. Even today sentai is a thing I could pretty much easily get into, but its target demographic is a bit too young for me to really enjoy now. (I watched one season of that parody/meant for older-audiences Akibaranger series, but found it a bit too ridiculous and silly to continue watching the second. Maybe someday I'll pick it up!) But these two were sort of general type things, didn't have a favourite character to gravitate to, just enjoyed the concept and story. (such as this wondrous cartoon called Weekenders, but I think I've said enough of it for now P: )

And now for the other end of the gamut, introduced to me by the great medium that is VIDEO GAMES! My brother always played these girly RPGs of girly franchises like Final Fantasy and Sailor Moon, meanwhile I was beating people up in LF2 and beating people up in NHL97 and beating mushrooms up in Mario and beating...well basically I didn't really play any RPGs aside from Pokemon. A majority of these types of games have pretty much 99% male characters, what with the beating up associated more closely with the testosterone Y chromosome.  But hey me and my two guy friends and my dude cousin were all about the video games. Yes, when he played Halo on the Xbox I would watch because first-person made me dizzy. Every time I went over it was either a hockey game (to the point my uncle stormed downstairs and turned our Playstation off because it was so late...but it didn't seem like we were being loud in the first place?? My uncle's not a nice person lol) or Worms on Playstation or Gundam games (I don't remember its title!) in Playstation or...WWE on the Nintendo 64. Or my other dude friend with his N64 and always playing Mario Party and Pokemon. 

Anyway this could lead into a huge rant about why I enjoy female friendships/shippings so much these days, traced back to my years of childhood where all my guy friends were super nice and awesome and all my girl friends either told me I'd turn into a boy if I hung around boys too much, or that boys shouldn't be allowed and lock themselves in my room on my birthday while I stood outside with my crying cousin or getting into a fight with that girl because I was tired of being the one always wrong and playing the idiot male stuffed animal being the buttmonkey to her superior female stuffed animal and what was I talking about again?

Oh, Beyblade.

That's right, the first anomaly is Beyblade. It's a show with 99% guys, aimed towards boy audiences (seriously it was so shounen it wasn't funny) and had extremely poor writing in at least one of the seasons, extremely poor action scenes in one of the seasons, and extremely poor design in one of the seasons. And it was not a video game that I enjoyed with guy friends. Oh no it was a show that became my first fandom, populated with many other girls around me. So after thinking about everything beforehand and having my mind deviate to irrelevant memories like that last paragraph, I wondered to myself...why did I enjoy this show so much?

We must go to the source, that being the one episode that drew me into the series. I always cited that Max's utter adorableness in the one season two episode when he is trapped in a collapsed building with his enemy, Mariam, as the thing that started it all. Max was super cute, was super friendly, and one thing I really liked about his voice in particular is that usually an adorable little boy with hyperactive tendencies would be given a high voice, but here his voice actor was maturing and his voice was quite low. Even though it was low the acting was quite good (at least that I could tell of a dubbed show anyway) and he was still spunky and happy despite his low voice, making Max extremely unique in my eyes. Sometimes typecasting voices to certain types of characters makes them a lot more boring than they could be. After all, it's not always that someone you know also has the most fitting of voices too, right? Wouldn't that be too much of a coincidence? Max actually sounded like a young boy and not a girl voicing a boy because every young male has a high voice and they aren't still that young age when going through puberty either, amirite???

But I rarely ever mentioned the other part of this source, Mariam. When you think about the female characters in Beyblade...everything sort of falls short. The VERY first female character introduced in the show was a girl who wore complete pink, basically being the pink counterpart to Rei and not being especially original in the process. Supposedly she is meant to be the female love interest for Rei (eventually, they do get married at the end of the manga) but that has to be the least interesting love interest you could ever make for a male character....A PINK COUNTERPART to the character. Whether or not Mao/Mariah's personality was interesting at all (I don't even remember! I think she just spent all her time talking/thinking about Rei since it was his character arc and thus has nothing about her as an individual at all) it's still pretty disheartening that the first female character introduced is someone like this. (You gotta start somewhere right?) But the very next was some girl in the American team who wasn't memorable at all. She also didn't have much of a role compared to pink cat girl. And as far as I remember those were the only two of the female gender that existed in season one...sad, huh? Unless Max's mom counts. :X

So season two comes by and there is this mysterious female character in a brown cloak along with other mysterious brown cloak people. She has one line and is super mysterious but is already more interesting than every female introduced combined including this Hiromi/Hilary chick who might just be around to be Takao's love interest or something because she never picks up the sport of spinning tops at all. WHAT IS HER PURPOSE!? Just to support? A cheerleader??? Anyway the mysterious brown cloak people disappear and we instead get these friendly spinning top enthusiasts who end up using experimental cyborg wrestling animals in order to steal the main characters' wrestling animals! Oh no!! Salima had potential, but she was sadly reduced to Rei's second love interest who didn't develop much of a personality besides being really stupid. Man this arc was really stupid and these side-characters were really stupid. The only thing that was really interesting about all this is apparently, in the non-bowdlerised original, Kai's roommate at some private boarding school was also manipulated into using experimental cyborg wrestling animal, but it was so powerful he went insane and died. (I mean why else did he show up as a spirit later on when Kai was facing the same experimental cyborg wrestling animal???) Anyway even though Kai found his roommate to be an annoying fanboy, the fact that he was victimized by these evil people and he failed to protect him haunts him, and pretty phoenix feathers fly everywhere as he achieves his pained vengeance.

Oh and Max was hardcore (and really dumb) this arc, so that was cool too. But I digress, Salima ended up stupid and then bland when she was good again, another boring potential love interest for Rei (combine this with the supposedly angsty Kai episode and there's no need to wonder why Yaoi was so rampant in this fandom) and so we wait yet again for some sort of female character that was worth anything, anything at all. 

Finally the best arc in the entire series began, the Saint Shields. Is it a wonder the only female character worth anything (and I mean ONLY, not ONE OF, ONLY) was a part of this arc? Okay so Dunga was stereotypical dumb muscle, short green-haired kid had no personality besides being a rat, and Ozuma was stubborn bull horn crazy dedicated serious "COMPLETE OUR MISSION" dude, but as a whole the four of them complimented one another perfectly. It is very refreshing when the most interesting character with the most interesting development as side-character has ever and will ever see in this series, comes from the female in the group, Mariam. Yes, that's right ladies and gentlemen. The reason I loved Beyblade was because by sheer chance, I happened to watch the best part of the entire series. No wonder I rant about things so much. You are drawn to something because it's so good but the rest of it is crap, like an amazing trailer that spoils everything and the stuff you actually pay for in theatres is worth jackshit.

So Max and Mariam are battling as per usual because they need to steal the wrestling animals from their owners to protect them, sort of like those Team Plasma dudes in Black and White (but not really in B2W2) but then some architect or construction worker epically failed at their job and the building came down just because a few spinning tops smashed into a few support beams. (Well as far as I can remember) Maybe that's why the building was conveniently abandoned, who knows. (I think there was some sort of machine summoning ANCIENT wrestling animal that did so, a dinosaur or something but eh, I'll still blame the planners. They should have foreseen a dinosaur wrecking the place and planned accordingly!) Miraculously our main character and side character survive because people dying can't ever be shown death in children's shows despite what happened a dozen episodes ago. But that character was very minor so no one cares. What was fascinating about this sequence of events was at the time such a thing was very foreign to my young, inexperienced eyes. Max being the shorter, nicer kid despite being the boy, and Mariam being the taller meaner kid despite being a girl. Even though I've had poor experiences with friends of the girl variety media had taught me still that girls must be nice and petite and conforming and guys must be alpha manly males that save all the damsel in distresses' days. I'm not sure why this was so emphasized in my mind considering all the shows and media I mentioned paragraphs ago that were nothing of the sort. Well some of them were of the sort, so close enough.

Anyway one thing happened that I hadn't really seen too often aside from Hey Arnold! (and that example is an extreme one, as well) and that was a girl who hates you and is your enemy and has misguided views, starting to melt in your presence because you are nice to her. They still try to hold up their bad girl image, but hey, maybe this boy isn't so bad after all because he didn't die in a collapsing building either and they worked together to find an escape and oh my god you hurt your shoulder let me bandage it up with my headband holy crap this is so cute and the character development and the amazing designs of both characters and the unique circumstance the two are in WOW! Also Mariam's wrestling animal is a shark and Max's is a turtle. A SHARK, supposedly a very badass vicious creature very few traditional females would enjoy as an animal, is MARIAM's while Max gets a cute docile little turtle (okay it's not cute or docile or little at all, but it's still a turtle) emphasizing his defensive prowess. SO DIFFERENT, SO REFRESHING! SO CUTE! SUCH FRIENDSHIP.

Hey girls? Guys aren't so bad. Hey guys? Girls aren't simply your pink counterparts.  So the end of this arc has the traditional beat each other up in the sport of spinning tops. Mariam predictably loses to Max, but learns that since Max is rather competent perhaps stealing their wrestling animals to protect said animals from evil people isn't the right way after all. Then we had that pretty awesome episode where Rei decides he don't need no wrestling animal to fight off the wrestling animals...and almost gets crushed by an abandoned roller coaster, but his tiger is too loyal to let him die so stupidly and escapes the rock itself. (This episode is also a reason all that rampant yaoi isn't so puzzling after all even though, as far as the creator's intentions were concerned, the episode is just to show off how badass Rei really is)

Ah, where was I? Now I did say this arc is the best in the entire series. For some reason the third season was rather popular among the English audience despite bombing in ratings in Japan, thus being the last season. You see every season is crippled by a significant flaw, so unfortunately there is no perfect season to point towards. The first season had linear storytelling and thus was pretty easy to develop the characters and show off the spinning tops. The story and "gameplay" as I will call it, using video games terms, was really well-done. (That being the action scenes of the spinning tops smashing into one another) but the design of the characters was atrocious, likely putting off many fans (and so I will call this the "graphics") who may have played it. Imagine season one like an NES game or an Atari game but it still had a compelling, if simple, story and really good gameplay. The gameplay will draw in the intended audience and the story keeps everything organized and coherent so no one gets confused or bored. Luckily certain characters have a rustic charm in this style, or at least don't look too crappy so it even drew in those outside of the target demographic. 

Then the second season ramped up in the story, but the story put so much emphasis on the wrestling animals that it really screwed over the gameplay, that being the action scenes. Many people who really enjoyed those scenes were put off by this season despite the graphical overhaul. For me since I am not the target audience, I don't care all too much how the spinning tops are handled so it didn't bother me too much, but the major target audience probably was so they put far less spotlight on the wrestling animals next season, that being season three. Also while the graphics improved some people did not enjoy how cartoony it looked (the sudden youth of all the characters!) but to me it looked super duper cute. :D

Finally the third season sacrificed story this time around for gameplay and graphics. 99% of the new characters had no development or were bland, and the old characters suddenly forgot their development (Kai) has no consistent characterization (Rei) for some reason went backwards in design (Max, why is his hair bleached?? What happened to his super cute colour scheme of dark blue, red, and yellow?? WHY) and people who went backwards in their development (Takao). But hey at least the spinning top part was improved. You'd think with the action scenes and the graphics being so nice more people would watch, but because the story (which is far more important in a show than a video game thus the flaw of using this analogy) was all over the place and silly that it detracted from the show itself. Every new female character had piss-poor development too, so that department was not improved on whatsoever. Sure everything looks good now but it doesn't read good and thus its poor ratings despite an audience of yaoi fangirls (that was the only audience that was still watching in Japan apparently at the time. I've no clue how they came to that conclusion either. It's still a failure because they aren't the target demographic)

And that is why I liked the show. 

Yep, this rant sure was all over the place.
spotto: (Default)
warning: original Japanese and dub names interchanged because I watch both and can't decide on a name

It seems the problem with Frontier is that the writers had plans for Takuya, Kouji, and Kouichi, then realized they needed more characters because the season didn't have Digimon to step-in as their partners, and thus be potential candidates (or at least bounce off of) to develop. So they decided to add some kids that weren't your standard noodle boy, that being the overweight kid, the female kid, and the younger kid. Unfortunately since they had no plans, it felt like they just did whatever they wanted for them, saw that their arcs didn't work, and so eventually gave up and made it the Takuya and Kouji show. 
 
Of course, when I read reviews that also assume the writers simply stretched out parts of the season to even make that 50 barrier, they probably didn't have enough story in the first place either, which adds a little credibility to my theory. It's the opposite of the 02 problem which has a million characters good and bad, with a million plot points that all lost its bearings and as a result, ended with plotholes galore. 
 
This is rather disappointing because Frontier had the least amount of characters to develop to date. Adventure started out with fourteen characters in the very first episode, introduced all at once with constant stat screens. Four seasons later and they decided to devote a good six or seven episodes to Takuya and Kouji losing horribly to two random Royal Knights. 
 
What's even more irritating is how easy it could've been to mitigate those problems. You wouldn't need to stretch out a bunch of Royal Knight episodes if the other four just had their own Fusion/Double Spirit Evolutions as well. There's no need for everyone to turn burst mode or bio-merge or whatever, but there's absolutely zero reason for the other kids to not have the fusion evolution at least. So as the other four get those evolutions, there's four episodes you don't have to devote to the Royal Knights pummelling our heroes anti-climatically and destroying more parts of the Digital World.  Episode Forty where Tomoki confronts his bullies could've been a fine episode for him to fusion evolve, except maybe his penguin form might cause a laughing stock considering he deliberately avoided using his human spirit unlike everyone else. Obviously this episode should take place earlier in the season, say before the main duo get their unity evolutions or whatever they were called.
 
Have everyone in a fusion-form finish off Cherubimon, and then the unity evolutions where the less important kids give up their spirits cause the demise of the Royal Knights instead. Then they would fight Lucemon for a few episodes, fail, Kouichi dies, and then Susanoomon shows up with every remaining kid fused instead of just goggle boy and loner kid. At least even if there are a few annoying episodes where the Royal Knights destroy them, it'd be all of them as a team instead of a few of them sitting on the sidelines trying to chuck snowballs at them.
 
I'm not here to just harp on Frontier however, considering it's probably my favourite season subjectively thanks to nostalgia and my love of the whole sentai theme with animal-themed armour. (Wild Force was my favourite Power Rangers season!) They're only third (or second considering I tie Adventure/Tamers) but they're second because of this nostalgia. In my brain I should know better, but in my heart, Frontier is there to stay. There's a lot of issues Frontier covers that other seasons don't seem to touch on as much. Bullying for example was something I strongly identified with, so seeing Tomoki being so heroic to those bastard kids in the aforementioned episode forty ended up being one of my favourite episodes. The kid actually does become a better person in this season, so he's pretty much my favourite kid of the entire franchise. (Yes, more than TK and Kari!) He's up there with Ikuto, who is probably second.
 
As for Zoe/Izumi...let me start by saying, as a kid, I never actually noticed her very skimpy/fanservicey outfits as Digimon. No seriously, I didn't notice how much skin Kazemon and Zephyrmon were showing at all. It didn't really bother me, or look like anything out of the norm. I thought Kazemon was cool because she had that same visor thingy the angels and my personal favourite Digimon of all time, Silphymon had. So I thought she was in the same league as them despite being pretty terrible at fighting. Zephyrmon looked like a cool ninja lady, which was rare for me at the time as most ninja people were men. I was really, really high on the episode she received the beast spirit because for once, the girl was the one that had to be depended on as the guys were helpless, and Zoe did not have any trouble controlling her beast form at all. 
 
Looking back, Izumi is not really the paragon of Digimon females, but somehow she worked for me as a kid, so I actually see her as one of my favourite Digimon characters and yes, that is sort of sad. She was better than Sora in my opinion and despite Mimi's impressive development, my patience for her whining in Adventure was a minimum. Yolei was very...eccentric, and while Rika is considered to be the best female character Digimon has to date, I'm never really fond of the cold and stoic standoff-ish character. So that left me with Izumi and still leaves me with Izumi because Yoshino is terrible.
 
Which again, is sort of sad.
 
Oh I forgot about Hikari...never cared for her. Gatomon was cool though!
 
Overall I did not generally like Digimon for female characters or as role models, and objectively they really only had one, arguably two awesome girls in the franchise. (What is Xros Wars?) But they do need to be somewhat competent at least if they're not going to have a lot of depth or importance. Even if characters are not the biggest part of Digimon for me (this includes the guys, yes) they still needed to be likeable for the season to be strong. Unfortunately I did not enjoy Savers whatsoever for the very reason that none of the characters, save sometimes Ikuto, did anything for me.
 
As I said before, cold and stoic does not do, ruling out Touma. If only that one episode where he was utterly ridiculous in his suit trying to impress Masaru's sister was more frequent. Yoshino is terrible and Masaru is fine for a boy growing up and seeing this badass teenager punch giant demons in the face, but not for me. I never thought Digimon would really ever have such a character in its franchise. It always had its share of idiot heroes, but never a guy so hot-blooded that his mantra to life was fist-fighting every punk out there and bonding with his Digimon in the exact same way. Digimon was always about necessary fighting, not eager blood-knight fighting. He was too shounen for me, which I find kind of odd because Savers was advertised as being targeted to an older audience, instead it ended up being the opposite of Tamers.
 
Tamers was supposedly targeted to kids, but as a child I completely skipped the season finding it slow and dull. As an adult I now appreciate its wondrous storytelling and three-dimensional characters. Savers I had assumed would also be something like that, but ended up feeling like a terribly-dubbed kids anime on the Disney Channel, and this was me watching the original Japanese. Yoshino may have ended up as just a bland female instead of downright terrible had her voice-acting not been the worst performance I've ever heard in any form of media ever, which was highly discouraging considering I used to think of Japanese voice-acting as a very professional and talented field of work. 
 
Considering Ikuto did not show up until at least fourteen episodes into the season, and started actually showing depth instead of his overdone "humans-are-evil" shtick halfway through the series, Savers was agonizing to go through. Luckily there were some decent side-characters, including the badass Mercurimon and that ferret Satsuma had. One reason Silphymon ended up being my favourite Digimon ever was due to Hawkmon (but Gatomon being awesome helps too) and how he did not have to have matching genders with his partner. I thought it happened again, except the Digimon this time being a female and thus a female character I could fall back on every time Yoshino opened her mouth, but it turns out it was just a very feminine-sounding male. I had never been so disappointed in Digimon.
 
Sure it had those two expies of the Hypnos girls, but I never had much thought on the Hypnos girls themselves so why would I care about the ones here now? We can't even assume their Digimon are of the other gender, except maybe because KnightChessmon looks like a robust male. Then again, the Piyomon this season is a brightly pink bird who happened to be male this time and was partnered with Masaru's sister, who was alright. But what does that mean for Yoshino? That not only is she the token girl, her Digimon is even more of a token girl!? And had Yoshino not had such an inexperienced voice-actor, Lalamon would be in the spotlight for worst female ever. What the hell did she do besides be useless and then be fanservice?
 
And yes, it was pretty easy to notice her fanservice. Even my oblivious child-self could not ignore the wiggling ass during Rosemon's evolution. What the fuck happened, Digimon!? WHY!? It's almost like the target demographic for this season was strictly male teenagers...and suddenly everything makes so much more sense.
 
I could complain about Masaru's near-invincible father or how flat and stereotypical BanchoLeomon ended up being, but I'll end with something usually considered Savers' strength. Don't get me wrong, Kurata was a despicable shit, but he pretty much ended up being the entire cause of literally everything bad in the season. Ikuto's parents are dead!? KURATA!! Masaru's dad is lost!? KURATA!! The Digimon want to kill us all? KURATA!! Touma's sister is sick and there's no cure? KURATA!! Isn't there a sole problem in this entire series that can't be traced back to Kurata? I guess he technically didn't invent or pass on whatever made Touma's sister sick. Touma's the only one whose individual angst can't really be traced back to Kurata, but he meddles with him anyway. Yoshino has no angst, or whatever that piano sibling stuff that came out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast was supposed to be. It's hard to feel sorry for her when she's the only one whose family never appears at all, and said sisters never really step into her life to give her actual angst. It's hard to feel sorry for her feeling inadequate around everyone else when she's inadequate around everyone else for ninety percent of the season. And when they had other chances to give us something to work with, they never do. Everyone gets Ultimate at the same time and she ends up sharing with Ikuto for burst mode, telling us nothing new or interesting at all. Writers, WHY DOES SHE EXIST!? 
 
See, this wouldn't be a problem (except Yoshino, she will always be a problem) if Savers wasn't supposedly aimed at an older audience. If the conflict can all be traced to a single source, and it ends up being an irredeemable power-hungry psychopath, it paints everything very black and white. If Kurata did not exist, everything will be a-okay! Or maybe he's so unbelievably outrageously reprehensible that other shady people/Digimon can't possibly make a splash. Either way, every problem leading back to a single extremely evil dude makes the show feel more like a kids show and less like a show supposedly aimed at an older audience.
 
I almost wished I watched the dub instead so the atmosphere of the story would be more fitting. The dub cut a bunch of the darker aspects and actually directed the season for kids. Also Yoshino's voice actress is probably infinitely more superior and so she could be more tolerable, or at least ignorable. They probably didn't utilize a very one-dimensional high-pitched voice for Lalamon, but I guess there really was no point for a different voice considering Lalamon was so one-dimensional. Every season's strongest point is when the sixth ranger character is developed and slowly brought into the party. For Savers, it was its only watch-able arc. I guess that's what a lot of people say about Frontier, but at least Frontier had a respectable, awesome ending and not that bullshit Savers had.

Digimon is a great franchise, but I hope Xros Hunters is its end at least on the Anime front. There's too many ups and downs and discrepancies for anything truly great to rise back from the ashes once again. Besides the end of Hunters apparently had the goggle (and not goggle) boy of every season returning to help out the heroes, and then be a power source for ultimate back-scratcher Excalibur! They shafted Frontier again by never showing the super awesome EmperorGreymon. He could've appeared by already having taken the spirits from half his friends before he got there, and then Kouji could actually show up to combine with him for Susanoomon. (It never would've made a difference for other cameos since everyone else doesn't show up anyway) Instead Kouji ends up being the only lancer kid involved in a fusion that never shows up. What a damn shame and no, a glowing ball does not count. (Kouichi also appears to be dead, so take that as you will...especially when Grani comes back to life for Dukemon but then leaves before the final episode making Crimson Mode literally pure fanservice...) Having Aldamon not even scratch the enemy is rather embarrassing. Are they secretly implying that yes, it was a terrible season? Bleh.  

But yeah, Digimon. This will probably be my last rant on anything Digimon related...unless I somehow get coaxed into watching Xros Wars. It'd just be further ranting! So...yeah. 
spotto: (oshi-- the captain is lazy)
I hate shipping.



Well okay that's not completely accurate, but lately it's a kind of subject matter that has been a bit too frequent. I went into a sad story, it had no other tags, the story's tag was merely "sad" and was greeted with unexpected shipping. You read half the story and find it SO AMAZING and suddenly...SHIPPING and the building you've been constructing tumbles over.

It just felt so unnecessary too! The story was fine. It had the essence of friendship and rainbows MLP is known for, except everyone is dead and then SHIPPING suddenly. I then found out it was a story meant to be some sort of epilogue-of-sorts to another story...which is completely fine...except they thought it'd work standalone as well and submitted it as a standalone story. So the shipping just felt jarring and out of place and my enjoyment of the story got kicked in the gut.

And as much as it might seem so, no it's not because "oh well if the ship was a ship you liked you probably would've liked it". No, if I wanted to read shipping I would read shipping. It would have a tag called shipping to signify that there is shipping so if I want to read it I'd read it. In fact I was looking for Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie FRIENDSHIP stories and ran into shipping that I did not expect. Of course this time it was my fault because I forgot to look at the genre (Romance) and it just came out of nowhere. I was okay with it later, as a shipping story since I do like PinkieShy but my friendship story-searching self was obviously not satisfied. (By the way I didn't find a good story involving those two, shipping or not. I'll have to settle with generic-cute and heartwarming stuff for now, sigh. Well the more I cannot find something I'd like to read, the more likely I am to write it myself)

I forgot to mention I never read shipping stories anyway, so... I mean I try finding some and taking a look, but they're never good...and if there are good ones, I don't ship the ship in them so. I also heard Hearts and Hooves is going to be a CMC story where they try to hook up Mac and Cheerilee, so my worst fears did not come to light as I had thought it might! Thank Celestia! I wonder if the story will be similar to the PPG episode where the girls attempted to hook up the Professor and Ms. Keane? Of course even if the synopsis of that episode turns out not to bother me, something like that will always bother someone out there...and it did.

The most popular het ship is Fluttermac, so you can see where I'm going with that. This being a Dreamwidth and former Livejournal....I am obviously here to complain! I don't think I'm going to be one of those people who will get these types of blogs out of that reputation sadly, lol.

And there were a lot of people out there rather upset that Fluttermac is potentially being sunk by this episode. I think they're silly, obviously. Now of course someone out there might assume "Why, if it WERE Fluttermac being supported by the episode instead of this, Spotto would be upset because it'd sink PinkieShy!" and I am clearly a scumbag hypocritical bastard! And you know what?

Maybe I would be upset, but probably for totally different reasons. Okay I can't guarantee it won't partly be because of that, but ultimately if it were FlutterMac and not CheeriMac (these portmanteaus lol) I'd be upset due to introducing romance into the mane six....which means if PinkieShy were canon (and that would never happen in a million years anyway) I too would be upset because again, it introduces romance into the mane six. We are here to watch about Friendship is Magic....you know what, maybe there could be a lesson about tolerating a friend suddenly spending all their time with a colt, and the ramifications of all the drama resulting from that, but this is a kids show. Kids will not be able to understand such a lesson seeing as their friends shouldn't really be in relationships at that age, and since it is a kids show any serious romance really has no place in the show. And in that sense, I don't think CheeriMac will be successful just like Professor Utonium and Ms. Keane didn't work out either...because it's a kids show. They will not stay together. The only ounce of potential "love" that exists is Spike's crush on Rarity. Even if that got developed further to my utter surprise, nothing really implied that Rarity returned any feelings and that it was any more than a puppy-dog crush. End of story.

So I reiterate, SILLY.

Which could explain why I'm not quite as fond of the UFO crew as I once was.

The crew of UFO are not...well, they are not popular. They have their fans and I am one of them. There are plenty of talented people out there throwing their ideas and headcanon out via their artwork or animation of some kind that could bring in even more fans of said group of characters and that's great! I think Captain Murasa in particular, though a little stretched for depth at first (but with tons of potential) is getting a lot of attention lately, even if it's only from a few people...but luckily these few people are very talented and have awesome imaginations. Then Ten Desires comes around. I've mentioned this before, but I had a particular headcanon about the ship's crew...Ten Desires amended it greatly, throwing two new characters into the collective group when it was already the largest of any other game before. I already had a hard time trying to do anything with Ichirin without just not caring about her because it is really hard to care about a character with barely any substance! Then they throw in a moeblob which I guess is okay because the crew technically didn't have a moeblob yet, but Shou kind of counts already anyway...and Nue 2.0 except with old people jokes.

It gets old, people. 

I think that's why to me, Tamers from Digimon trumps over Adventure, just slightly. Adventure just had too many characters...and you could say  "Well, there was only seven...then eight" and that's okay. You can use fifty-two episodes to describe and develop eight characters...but there are MORE than eight characters...their Digimon partners too, they need some spotlight as well! Most of them were pretty much the same as their human counterparts, or if they weren't, were sweet and nice and well-meaning. They didn't have much going for them except as an extension of the kids as characters. The few exceptions were arguably Gabumon and Tailmon/Gatomon. Seriously Tailmon is like the Ken of Season 1 in comparison to her Digimon brethren. She had lots of development, and her best friend had more development than some of the main Digimon, and she's even more interesting than her own partner who although kind of cute and nice is too unrealistically pure and mature for a seven-year-old girl or however old Hikari was.

I mean yes, Tamers had a bunch of side-kids that didn't get enough spotlight and don't get me started on Ryo! (Even if he did have a bunch of games to develop him, yes) But in the end you saw all the promotional posters, all the advertising, any official image or trademark of Tamers at all...always emphasized the main three characters, their Digimon, and Impmon. They were the main characters. They were the ones we KNEW would get development and spotlight, the rest were a crapshoot. When I think of Tamers, it's the power trio and that one sixth ranger...the rest are there for comedy relief or to take up time when they can't think of anything else to fill an episode. Nowhere were we told that they'd have just as much substance as the rest. I am fine with that. They weren't designed to be interesting anyway, so most people aren't curious to know more.

(Which of course will always lead me to question the choice of singers for Biggest Dreamer/one of the EDs of Tamers....There's a tradition for each series where the boys sing the main theme and the girls since the ending theme. Tamers decided to include EVERY FREAKIN' MALE KID and their Digimon so Biggest Dreamers sounded like a rookie choir! And why would I want to hear a 4-year-old girl sing in the ED? (Jenrya's sister) All these extra side characters didn't contribute THAT much to the plot, so they shouldn't even BE singing! Takato/Jenrya/Ryo and their Digimon for Biggest Dreamer, Ruki/Juri + their Digimon (yes that includes Leomon lol) for the ED! That would've sounded amazing and NOT terribly cluttered. Bleh)

That makes Frontier look worse actually. They did away with Digimon partners, so more time for the kids, right? Wrong! Give all spotlight to Takuya and Koji and the new sixth ranger! Forget the other three even if they're in the opening and looking just as important as them! Even if we have plenty of time to develop them all we won't! How sad it is.

But I suppose my original point was shipping and in Touhou, my main ship was MuraNue. That ship also floats rather precariously in my headcanon as the make-up of the crew did before Ten Desires. It depended on how I view Nue mostly, that she did all her jerkass annoying things because she's lonely. But wait, she has an old friend, a trickster just like her living outside of Gensokyo she can call in during emergencies! And that friend decides to stick around as if the outside of Gensokyo missing a tanuki is of no consequence! That tells me the crew probably isn't as close as I thought it was. (The dynamic was the weakest of the entire series' cast herds anyway, the UFO characters only gathered up together recently to free Hijiri, they weren't close at all! One reason why I think it's a less popular game besides the annoying UFO mechanic) 

So the crew already is treading on thin water with having too many characters and my brain span obviously too small to make up all the potential dynamics they have. Then they threw in two more characters and it's less of a "group of awesome friends" and more of a "WE LOVE HIJIRI FANCLUB YAAAY" or like, the guy you sit next to in Church because you both believe in God. That's all the similarities you have because these characters have no similarities at all,and are not related or a family like the Chireiden guys, nor are they mysteriously loyal like SDM nor are they servants or shinigami to a yama or shikigami to a troll, or a dysfunctional family of rabbits, nope. They're all just part of a fanclub because Hijiri is so great.

What's worse is that that didn't even have to happen. The introduction of both those characters feel so unnecessary. Kyouko less so I guess, if knowing how popular the Myouren Temple has become is important enough to warrant a whole new boss character, but the tanuki is so utterly pointless, unoriginal, and nothing new at all. The only thing she brings to the table is the possibility of youkai living outside of Gensokyo, but that's it. I have so much hate for that character and so many reasons to hate, to the point that she led to me to love MokouKeine far more, to absorb the Chireiden crew more, and enabled me to look into ponies for some collective group dynamics that kind of shrank away here.

One more thing...there is a very obvious reason why heterosexual shipping isn't as popular as its gay counterpart. The reason is incredibly simple actually...most TV shows and series have a cast that tends to be mostly girls or mostly guys. Now it would seem silly to ship basically all the guys with that one token girl character or visa versa, especially if some of them have little to do with her, like actually talking to her or anything like that. So it's only natural for shippers to see interaction between two characters, whatever gender they might be, and want to watch it go further into a romantic conclusion. After all, I ship MaxMariam because they talk to each other, fight each other, and have a funny chemistry going on with each other. I don't ship Fluttermac because they've never spoken to each other. (They're also too similar, seems like a pretty boring couple anyway) Both of these pairings are het. I don't think the sex of the participants in a couple even matter, one just happens to be more common.

Thus the end of this terrible rant, which I hate due being so awkwardly written/worded. I like my points too much to just scrap it as usual. Remind Spotto never to rant while half-asleep again. This has been Spotto, good nighto!



spotto: (Stage One.)
I have graciously provided a tl;dr summary at the end for all who give a crap. :D

DIGIMON. Something new! Or old, in this case. )

THE ENDDDD!!

spotto: (Cuteness that can KILL)
Which Digimon is the best Digimon of season 01?
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ANGEMON OF COURSE!!!! WHO WOULD SPEAK DIFFERENTLY!?
The faaaaar second is WarGreymon, who looked really cool.

Which Digimon is the best of season 02!?
That's right, ANGEMON AGAIN!
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*everybody looks at Spotto*
...okay fine, the best EXCLUSIVE 02 Digimon is...
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...obviously Silphymon. Hawkmon and Tailmon are wicked awesome so combining them makes it like....even MORE awesome. Words cannot describe such levels of awesomeness, however it does not compare to Angemon's awesomeness.

Which Digimon is the best of the Tamers season!?
Tamers failed for the sole reason of not having Angemon. In fact the only thing cool about this season is how epic they evolve, otherwise it's bleh. (The CG was AMAZING)
But the best Digimon here I guess was...
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Galgomon...a bunny with guns is wicked. However that picture is of BlackGalgomon, but the pictures of just plain Galgomon sucked, so here, an even COOLER Galgomon.

EDIT: It has come to my attention that Terriermon, the rookie form of Galgomon is actually a dog, but WHO CARES. I still say an epic bunny with machine guns.


Which Digimon is the best of the Frontier season!?
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ANGEMON OF COURSE! *everybody groans*
Yes he appeared in Frontier but he died, which sucked. If you're asking for an exclusive Frontier digimon I guess I'll go with...
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D'Arcmon! And then everybody asks me who this Digimon is, which I reply with no idea because it comes from the movie which I never watched.
Which doesn't really make her Frontier exclusive but I realized how shitty the Digimon in Frontier were despite really enjoying this season...but if I HAD to choose...
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...because...wings. (Shutumon)

Which Digimon is the best in the Savers season!?

I honestly never watched this season, but if I were to stare at all the Digimon featured, there were many epic looking Digimon but they all looked too similar to each other (all KNIGHT-ISH)...so I'd go with this guy:
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BantyoLiomon...looks AWESOME.



And FINALLY, while I love Pokemon what with CUBONE and Jigglypuff and Sandslash and other wicked Pokemon, DIGIMON'S NEWER DIGIMON ACTUALLY LOOK GOOD AS COMPARED TO THE SHITTY NEW POKEMON THAT LOOK WORSE THAN SHIT.

And finally...Aoi-dono, using the Japanese names of Digimon feel weird. HERE:
Galgomon...Gargomon (gee I wonder what happened there)
Shutumon...Zephyrmon (O:)
BantyoLiomon...BanchoLeomon (This is actually quite a change because there are two different species of lion Digimon, Leomon and Liomon, so to change a Liomon evolution to a Leomon evolution is quite major)

Anyway, that is all. :D

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