If you haven't watched these, definitely do so. And if you start feeling a few episodes in like 12 Kingdoms is maybe not for you, give it a few more episodes.
If you haven't watched these, definitely do so. And if you start feeling a few episodes in like 12 Kingdoms is maybe not for you, give it a few more episodes.
This is, uh, yeah.
I'll prolly arrive at both sooner or later. 12 Kingdoms especially piques my interest as the world sounds intriguing.
rn we're watching Kimetsu no Yaiba and it's a fairly standard but beautifully animated shounen battle plot in a real interesting setting.
Haven't read the thread at all but am still posting, in true PPPPosting fashion.
I used to hate anime, but my bf is a weeb, and I gotta say I've seen some things I didn't hate now. Sure, the tropes and oversexualization remains to be a thing, but I guess I can see past that? I mean, if I understand Japanese culture correctly, I can just assume it comes from /lots of repression/ and I kind of understand that that's a logical consequence of such an environment.
Anyway, I've seen things like Gurren Lagann and Psycho Pass and am currently following Vinland Saga, and I gotta say I've been thoroughly entertained.
I don't hate all anime anymore. Sorry if some people don't who I am anymore now after such an admission.
DtF is still my uh... bar things need to tunnel under
Mars of Destruction is just a boring n predictable grabbag of things from popular shows strung together on a shoestring budgeit feels like something youd sew on Newgrounds circa 2002
Valvrave is
Uh...
Bad shit so far
Let's expand on this.
You can watch Mars of Destruction in full on Youtube if you wanna spend 20 minutes on having a laff:
It's bad.
From top to bottom there's not a single part of this OVA that's handled with any sort of competence. It was either rushed through production in mere weeks, had terribly inexperienced staff working on it, had zero budget, or any combination of the three.
It's based on the visual novel of the same name and, given how popular VN adaptations were at the time (Fate/Stay Night, Umineko), you could easily draw parallels to old school exploitation films that were 'designed' to cash in on trends at the drive-in/video rentals.
"Easily" is the keyword here. It's easy to point out the specific bits and bobs that don't work, wrap one's head around it and extrapolate how the thing came into existence. It's bad but explicably so.
Now
Kakumeiki Valvrave / Valvrave the Liberator
is...
... uh...
Let's give some context first.
From the trailer you'd think the series was a basic Gundam knockoff: humanity has moved to space colonies, there's a war between different factions involving mecha and there's a teenage kid who needs to get into the robot.
It fits the mold of Gundam in the same way Mars of Destruction fits into the trend of VN adaptations. But that's about where the similarities end.
The series is animated fairly well --there's even a few shots on sakugabooru-- and overall the production values are what you'd expect from a large studio like Sunrise.
It looks and sounds decent, passing basic thresholds of quality.
But here's the thing: the series is composed by none other than Ōkouchi Ichirō, who previously wrote Code Geass (also a Sunrise joint).
Now I'm not 100% whether I've gone at length here about Geass, I have done so on Discord, so I'll just give a rundown:
Code Geass is considered a classic and I'm fairly sure that even if you're not wholly familiar with anime you've at least been exposed to it through sheer cultural osmosis.
Generally a famous and well-liked story, be it film, series or book, has a basic level of storytelling competence.
It might rely on contrived plotting or trite characterization, but the events that take place and the choices made by characters make sense on a fundamental, cause-and-effect level. You can extrapolate it all back to a place where it makes sense.
Why does Mars of Destruction's story work the way it does? Why do its characters act the way they do? Because it's poorly/cheaply/quickly made. There wasn't really any time or experience to help make it somewhat decent.
For a blessed while Code Geass can be traced back in much the same way. It's contrived and reliant on tropes, but the narrative and characterization fit a mold that it has established for itself.
It has asked a few questions, raised a few mysteries concerning its world and characters and the general expectation is that these will be solved.
Over the course of nearly 50 episodes though the series continuously escalates, introducing so many batshit plot elements that both undermine or retcon any sort of worldbuilding or characterization it has established.
It effectively becomes a parody of itself.
And it's seemingly aware of it, turning into an outright comedy for one episode
But then the series just spirals out of control, barreling into a storytelling black hole around 2/3rds of the way.
Here it becomes complete and utter nonsense, devoid of any kind of internal logic.
It is honestly *baffling* and I'm not sure whether any of it is intentional or not. Is the whole series one giant joke? Is Ōkouchi Ichirō secretly an Andy Kaufman styled genius?
For a while I had no idea.
That was until I reached the other end of Geass' black hole, where I found...
Kakumeiki Valvrave
Take the ludicrous cadence of season 2 Code Geass, compress it into an even more concentrated form and combine it with "Gundam synopses that you've skimmed once" and you arrive at whatever the fuck this is lmao
I have to disclose: I've only seen 6 episodes, but the experience so far has been exhausting, because it actively resists any attempt to trace back or explain any of the things that happen on-screen.
Here's an example:
So Valvrave cribs a lot from Gundam.
You can level a lot of interesting criticism at Gundam: how through the decades its become so formulaic it's now a near parody of itself, or how its anti-war message stands in stark contrast with the franchise's need to continue depicting war so that it can sell new gunpla.
But its world makes sense and is adequately explained.
In the universe of Gundam humanity has largely moved to live on O'Neill Cylinders. These massive, spaceborne colonies sit at the center of the story's conflicts, with some of their inhabitants declaring independence from Earth and starting a war. They serve a purpose beyond 'just looking cool'.
Moreover their existence makes sense. Humanity has reached a level of technological advancement where they *could* construct these cylinders and some series depict their construction (and destruction).
The universe has a level of verisimilitude that makes it palpable, and it's also part of why it's so popular.
Valvrave has the same general plot element, only instead of O'Neill Cylinders humanity has largely moved onto...
a Dyson Sphere
I'll let Wikipedia do the talking:
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to explain how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reach the surface of any orbiting planet. Building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.
H'okay.
So humanity has evolved to a point where it can build a Dyson Sphere.
Cool.
Oh wait hold on, that's not all?
Humanity has evolved to a point where it can build a Dyson Sphere around an artificial star?
Okay so
The level of technological advancement you need for this is honestly hard to fathom. I'd wager humanity would look completely unrecognizable from what we know today. Like, the amount of resources you need to harvest to even construct *part of* a Dyson Sphere, let alone being able to create AN ARTIFICIAL STAR??!?!?!?!
Humanity is basically godlike at that point.
Oh hold on...
We still drive trucks and cars with good ole combustion engines?
...
Okay
And kids still go to good ole regular school that's the exact same as ones you'd find in circa 2013 Japan.
Alright.
Now anachronistic settings aren't inherently a bad thing. Hunter x Hunter's world is a grabbag of different eras, technologies and whatnot for instance. HxH delivers on interesting character ars that show it has an awareness of the shounen battle anime tropes it's portraying. On a more meta level the series asks "what if instead of one super powerful anime protagonist the world had thousands" and the results are kind of fucked up.
There is a method to HxH's madness that reveals itself as the series progresses.
In Valvrave there is no point to this Dyson Sphere. It's not even shown in any way other than shots like the one above. It's just... mentioned in passing and for a while I was't even sure whether the sphere encompassed the Earth or the Sun, much less an *artificial star*.
It's just never mentioned, at all. Nor is there any point to the thing actually existing.
It's just fluff basically.
Sure, in episode 4 the teenage kids cut their section off from the rest of the sphere as they declare themselves an independent nation (yes).
But that has no real consequences. You'd think getting cut off from their primary source of life would be devastating but it's just a minor inconvenience.
OKAY
So I've just gone on for whole paragraphs about something that's on screen for maybe a minute or so and in the grand scheme, is it really that important?
Oh, not at all. (nothing actually matters in this series).
I latch onto this example because I can easily explain the apparent level of thinking, or lack thereof, that went into this particular part of the setting.
Now try and extrapolate this to every single other part of the series.
And I mean EVERYTHING.
Characters are shown to be competent at a thing from out of nowhere.
In the 2nd episode this dude, who's name I can't even remember, can apparently fly a helicopter cuz he once rode a motorcycle.
And
one of the main female (teenage, schoolgoing) characters JUMPS OUT OF A HELICOPTER
AND IS ABLE TO HANDLE A GUN LIKE A TRAINED PROFESSIONAL.
So we figured: "hey, maybe she's some kind of secret agent working for one of the factions like this other character"
She was an idol.
Yeah.
Is this ever mentioned prior to episode 6? Is it hinted at?
lol
I haven't even mentioned anything about the mecha and how they apparently turn their pilots into
and are you ready for this
FUCKING VAMPIRES
AND BY BITING SOMEONE ELSE THEY CAN TRANSFER THEIR MINDS INTO THEIR BODIES
AND THEY'RE IMMORTAL
You know those wooden boxes that have a lid with different shapes cut into them. You put the square block through the square hole, the cylindrical block through the round hole.
Simple.
Trying to process Valvrave is like trying to force a rectangular block through a round hole.
But while you're trying to jam it in, it then gives you a pyramid.
The remaining hole is a five point star.
Then it gives you another block, and another, and another, and another, and another, FASTER AND FASTER AND FASTER AND FASTER.
AND NONE OF THEM FIT
I've only seen a quarter of this show
So how to make sense of this?
This is I believe the closest the series is ever gonna get to explaining why it works the way it does.
It expects the viewer to process on-screen events and character actions relying on nothing but narrative shorthands.
"Things in this story work the way they do because that's how they work in other (better) stories."
But it goes beyond just being derivative. It fails to explain the most basic things that happen on screen.
It doesn't just copy/paste things from Gundam for instance. It lacks a fundamental understanding of why Gundam works the way it does.
If Gundam is a pie, Valvrave is a screenshot of a Google Image Search of a pie printed onto a plate and being called a "pie".
This approach to storytelling is applied to every single layer of Valvrave's story.
Only where this philosophical thought experiment holds that "a digital computer executing a program cannot be shown to have a "mind", "understanding" or "consciousness", regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave",
Valvrave is written by an actual human being, not a computer.
This is then an actual writing style.
This is written by someone who has penned dozens of scripts. It's a series that has gone through months of preproduction and planning. These characters were designed by industry veterans and the whole thing was animated by a studio that helped define anime.
This is a production that lasted for years and has gone through so many changes and edits.
This is not a poorly budged production forced on a staff of inexperienced people who had to rush to meet a deadline.
This is something that someone thinks is good enough.
I'm only 6 episodes in.
Last edited by !saak on Tue Apr 21, 2020 7:23 am, edited 2 times in total.
I have to reiterate that it's nearly impossible for me to convey just how ludicrous this series
just by virtue of my rambling being a 2nd hand experience
it challenges everything I know about good storytelling
here's another example that just perfectly encapsulates this series
okay so
A TON OF SHIT HAPPENS and our protagonist, Haruto, bites the other main dude, L-Elf, and takes over his body to pilot the Valvrave.
I'd explain how we got here and the mountain of implications this has as the other main dude is now also a vampire but I value my sanity so let's just proceed.
ANYWAY
as battle #7815 is winding down our Haruto-in-L-Elf's-body is happy that he's defeated the enemies for now
he looks down and
sees something that just so happens to be sticking out of...
wait
Hold on
Drake, why does the pocket look like that?
Why does it extend halfway to his knee? What kind of pocket is this? Is this some new kind of spacepants pocket?
The answer of why the pocket is shaped the way it is is because
Haruto needs to be able to see this picture sticking out of it
on which there's this girl who is presumably super important to L-Elf and the story in general.
You see, she's the LIGHT of L-Elag78aegwegt.a;g
But... why have him find it in such a way that you need to change the way a pants pocket works
Like I get it
The control handle obscures the part of his pants where the actual pocket should be.
BUT WHY EVEN GO WITH A PANTS POCKET THEN??? WHY WRITE YOURSELF INTO SUCH A CORNER THAT YOU NEED TO CONTRIVE YOUR WAY OUT OF IT??
HE'S WEARING A DRESS JACKET
THEY HAVE SO MANY POSSIBLE POCKETS FOR YOU TO USE
to make matters worse
L-Elf had left detailed instructions for our protagonist Haruto, because he's a genius and he had planned for Haruto to bite him and... to pilot the Valvrave in his bo---my head hurts so much
Isaak: That's some pocket analysis I can't help but think of more western cartoons in which things just get pulled out of someone's hip for lack of pockets.
Regarding anime-looking: I will be watching that movie about the girl who yells "EXUH-PLOOOO-SION" all the time.
This synopsis sounds relatable to me, but the movie itself probably will not.
Also on the to-watch list: That latest Trigger movie that totally doesn't star a Kamina recolor.
Isaak: That's some pocket analysis I can't help but think of more western cartoons in which things just get pulled out of someone's hip for lack of pockets.
yeah like, hammerspace is a staple in cartoons for gags n stuff
here... it just raises further questions
Regarding anime-looking: I will be watching that movie about the girl who yells "EXUH-PLOOOO-SION" all the time.
This synopsis sounds relatable to me, but the movie itself probably will not.
oh cool what film is that?
Also on the to-watch list: That latest Trigger movie that totally doesn't star a Kamina recolor.
I should mention that one of the main girls has already taken over Haruto's body once and came onto another girl
you'd think you can extrapolate this to the "logical conclusion", and the series *itself* hints at stuff going in this direction
there's a setup, and you expect a result of some kind
A leads to B, cause and effect. It writes itself
so there's all these ingredients in this recipe that you expect to produce a certain kind of flavour
then it goes in... a direction that is somehow worse than I imagined
I feel like writing about this in more detail, but with appropriate warnings and spoilers because hooooo boy
it is malignant and it made me deeply uncomfortable
if you need a mecha pallete cleanser after this i recommend the Patlabor OVA and movies
aw man the Patlabor OVA was such a fun little thing
haven't seen the movies yet but I really feel like experiencing a story where the world feels lived in and advanced technology and political intrigue has actual implications.
I'm taking some time off next week and I'll take the opportunity to finally get that writeup on Darling in the Franxx up here
it's gonna be in different parts because otherwise I'll be writing and editing forever on the thing
I really like the second Patlabor movie. It's got this slow plot where it gets into the politics of the world, the end of the cold war, break up of the soviet union and japan's economic problems (in the patlabor universe that's the 2000s instead of the 90s) and the country's internal politics and place in the world. I watched it after watching SAC 2nd Gig and the two kind of share some similarities.
Last edited by DaikatunaRevengeance on Sun Apr 26, 2020 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I really like the second Patlabor movie. It's got this slow plot where it gets into the politics of the world, the end of the cold war, break up of the soviet union and japan's economic problems (in the patlabor universe that's the 2000s instead of the 90s) and the country's internal politics and place in the world. I watched it after watching SAC 2nd Gig and the two kind of share some similarities.
Mamoru Oshii directed both Patlabor and the two GitS films, SaC took cues from those films so that makes a loooootta sense
Episode 4 made me viscerally uncomfortable with an accurate portrayal of "allies" who are only in it for social media points and are actually so unknowledgeable and uncaring about the cause they're piggybacking off of that they become actively harmful to the marginalized people they interact with via their exploitation. This is a good thing because it is supposed to be disconcerting and wrong, and the narrative gets across how fucked up that is perfectly.
Like, holy shit you can just replace Beastmen with queer people in that episode and it scans perfectly, aside from the obvious fantastical stuff.
konosuba is like one of those things I hear a lot about but never really felt compelled to watch
prolly cuz it's an isekai
I watched it so you don't have to.
and... DUUUUUDE...
The sexualization (and 'isekai') in the series still felt like parody and satire, and was, like... Tolerable? At least for me. I mean, the show really felt like it could've been an animation based on some idiots playing DnD, with a whole bunch of ironic anime tropes slapped on top in a tounge-in-cheek self-aware manner. It really didn't take itself seriously at all, which in the case of the show really was a redeeming factor.
Also I really dig the Megumin cosplays I saw popping up at cons, top notch stuff.
But in the movie... It was just so obnoxiously, over-the-top, shamelessly out there! I mean, sure, it had really funny moments, but most of it just felt like "GEE I REALLY HOPE THE ANONS ON THE IMAGEBOARDS ARE PLEASED", and absolutely got as close to hentai as it possibly could. My bf called it 'post-irony'... But he's a fuckin' weeb, man, I call it fan service.
Floppy tits occasionally had their own sound effects, and that's the least of how bad it got.
I mean, I love my bf, but we obviously had different experiences watching this shit.
Episode 4 made me viscerally uncomfortable with an accurate portrayal of "allies" who are only in it for social media points and are actually so unknowledgeable and uncaring about the cause they're piggybacking off of that they become actively harmful to the marginalized people they interact with via their exploitation. This is a good thing because it is supposed to be disconcerting and wrong, and the narrative gets across how fucked up that is perfectly.
Like, holy shit you can just replace Beastmen with queer people in that episode and it scans perfectly, aside from the obvious fantastical stuff.
what I loved about this episode is how it subverts the stakes it sets up:
like
Early on when Michiru and her new friend Nina go to the party, there's the cop driving by and Michiru is obviously scared. Cuz they're not supposed to be there and the whole series has set up that "humans violently discriminate against beastmen". So that's a seed planted. FFW to the part you described and you have Shirou rushing to get them aaaandd... he just gets them. Before the party happened I was expecting that the cop would be foreshadowing some crazy escape but no. There's no big chase scene to take away from the real psychological or thematic weight... it's just them on the boat,
But in the movie... It was just so obnoxiously, over-the-top, shamelessly out there! I mean, sure, it had really funny moments, but most of it just felt like "GEE I REALLY HOPE THE ANONS ON THE IMAGEBOARDS ARE PLEASED", and absolutely got as close to hentai as it possibly could. My bf called it 'post-irony'... But he's a fuckin' weeb, man, I call it fan service.
Floppy tits occasionally had their own sound effects, and that's the least of how bad it got.
lol
yeah like
at some point a duck is just a duck, and text is just text
If you’ve been following along you’ll be aware of the inexplicable nature of Kakumeiki Valvrave’s storytelling.
There’s seemingly no rhyme or reason to any events that happen on screen.
Basic and fundamental building blocks like continuity or causality don’t matter. Plot points get introduced on a whim and are discarded with the same level of attention. Characters appear, are given a backstory and get killed off in the span of minutes.
There is no logical relation between what you’re told as a viewer, and the mysteries that are central to the plot.
Any attempt to figure out why things happen in Valvrave is a fool’s errand. They just... happen, and then it expects the audience to care.
I’d compare it to jingling keys at a baby, but here’s the thing:
It’s easily discernible why keys would be jingled at a baby and what the result is.
The person jingling them wants to entertain the baby. The baby laughs at the keys, they’re entertained.
Motive leads to behaviour leads to end result.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why things happen in Valvrave.
I’d assume it’s to tell a good story to entertain the viewer, but in order to tell a good story you need to have a basic understanding of how to tell one.
Instead Valvrave feels like something a Twitter AI bot would generate after being fed plot points and character descriptions from other, much better series.
Only it’s not. This is written, storyboarded, directed, animated, scored and voiced by actual, real life people with decades of experience crafting stories.
Real life people who saw it fit to include a rape scene.
A storyteller deals mostly with fiction, but even fictional events are based on real life counterparts. Fiction might take place in a fantasy world, or far off in the future, but it’s still rooted in ‘our’ reality by virtue of being made by real life people who’ve had real life experiences.
The context might be fantastical and ‘fake’, but the events still have an emotional truth that’s ‘real’ for the actual, real people in the audience that have experienced them.
So when a storyteller chooses to tackle a subject like rape, one of the single most disgusting and dehumanizing things one can do to another person, I believe they have a responsibility to handle it with respect to that emotional truth.
They should have an understanding of the implications and messaging of what they’re saying and how it fits in a larger, societal context.
Given how Valvrave has handled literally any given aspect of its story so far it’d be easy to figure out how well it does here.
…
No
it's not
it's... worse
fuck
Now I had specifically chosen this series to watch something bad and trashy and was told it included a scene involving sexual assault. So I went in with certain expectations.
"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."
Anton Chekov, Chekov’s Gun.
And for a while, in between all the noise and all the bullshit, the series foreshadows how a possible scene of sexual assault might unfold.
So here’s all the relevant elements:
First there is Haruto, our wet blanket protagonist.
In the first episode he gets turned into a vampire by the Valvrave after losing his crush Shoko in an enemy attack.
lol
Shoko turns out to have survived in a big reveal by the way because fuck you.
Anyway
Besides now being immortal he also has the power to swap bodies with someone after biting them. Also sometimes he loses control of himself for unknown reasons, becoming “monstrous” and attacking people.
The latter happens about two or three times in the series and is never really explored beyond Haruto saying he feels like "he's losing his humanity".
There's no efforts made to curtail it, he doesn't really explore why he acts the way he does. Doesn't go to find a cure or anything.
So there’s no implied narrative weight to it. Or maybe it's the fact that everything seems to have the same amount of weight and the whole thing is just noise BUT PLEASE HUMOUR ME.
The bodyswapping comes into play at several key moments:
It is a major reveal in the 2nd episode for instance, after it turns out that Haruto had taken over L-Elf’s body.
Later on he would again take over L-Elf’s body and find some weird ass pocket.
Oh also
Rukino, one of our female leads, uses her body swapping power to pose as Haruto and sexually intimidate another female character, Ninomiya Takahi, because she… showed an interest in Haruto I think?
Yeah cuz guys just get to go and corner women...
Cool.
As the series proceeds more people become Valvrave pilots, gaining the ability to swap bodies.
One conversation proceeds as follows:
Rukino gets excluded from the conversation cuz they're gonna be talking about...
Yeah fuck you too.
So we’re heading in a certain direction: one of bodyswapping horny teens involving a complete lack of consent.
Then...
As Haruto is standing in an elevator with Ninomiya Takahi she is shown to be uncomfortable, because Rukino (as Haruto) had previously harassed her.
He has not been made aware of this btw. Really cool on the part of Rukino.
Haruto loses it becoming “monstrous” and attacking her.
Rukino though steps in and calms Haruto down by kicking him in the stomach.
Now the nature of the Valvraves and what they do to pilots is meant to be kept secret, so Rukino does what anyone would do and…
Brushes Haruto's attack off as sexual assault, instructing Haruto to do the same.
And... blaming Takahi for wearing such a revealing outfit.
Fucking hell.
---- INTERLUDE
I could delve into this scene right here cuz jesus fucking christ, but we'd be here all fucking week and I've got shit to do like chill and have some time off.
So I'll just keep this short:
I think I truly, genuinely hate this series.
I started watching anime around two years ago and since then I've mostly liked the things I've seen.
I tend to seek out things I know I'll enjoy at least somewhat, stuff that got buzz, gets recommended to me or is considered a classic.
I've found films and series I love like nothing else and have taught me new ways of looking at the world and appreciating good storytelling.
It's only been recently in this journey that I started seeking out "bad" things. And I think I'm just now realizing what the absolute shit end of the spectrum is for me.
It's shit like this, and Darling in the Franxx.
more on that later
---- INTERLUDE
So anyway.
For a short and blessed while I entertained the thought that this was the much-talked-about sexual assault.
Only… the assault wasn’t intended to be sexual, rather it was framed as such to cover up the actual truth of the pilots.
Plus the series had been doing all this setup like the bodyswapping that has been an important plot device, it being used for nefarious reasons etc etc etc. So that will lead to something, right?
No.
(head's up, this is the part where we get into the actual scene)
There is more to this but like... uhh...
This is a shitposting subforum on an mlp site and unlike the people who made this I do have a general idea of context.
So I'll just put it in text: Haruto rapes Rukino while in his "monster" state
It is graphic and upsetting.
Here is the thing.
It is also incredibly fucking stupid.
I feel... uh... so fn weird saying this but I'm just genuinely baffled:
How do you make this stupid?
Because there is no build up, no reason for this to happen.
It goes against everything the series has said so far.
Haruto “becoming a monster” was never framed as being sexual, it merely made him violent.
Rukino has shown a romantic interest in Haruto, but Haruto is into Shoko and has so far not shown any interest in Rukino.
Then where is this coming from? Why? Why does he do this?
Is the series trying to subvert Chekhov’s Gun?
So far it hasn’t made any sort of meta-commentary on the nature of storytelling.
So what is the meaning? What is the series trying to say?
Well… it understands juxtaposition:
As the scene unfolds the series cuts back to Shoko giving an impassioned speech on how she’ll confess to the one she loves. That being Haruto… as he’s…
… Yeah.
...
I guess the way it unfolds would fit in with the general “framework” of the series… But that would require the series to have a framework to begin with.
And Valvrave has none.
Again, this is like a story written by an AI.
It presents a series of events, of imagery and sounds, that are connected by the simple virtue of being in sequence with one another. But the implied meaning of this sequence, of this text, is purely incidental.
So I'm just left with disgust and confusion.
And that's... surely not the point right? Is that what I'm supposed to get out of this?
If, like any other plot point, the series brushed the scene off only to then crash into yet another baffling new “reveal”, it might’ve just stayed at that.
Instead, for some reason, it chooses to further delve into it.
sounds like they needed something dramatic to happen, to shake up this group of bodyswapping teens, but since they already established that being killed in explosions doesn't stick, they needed it to be something else
